Coming up, the end-season just gets better and better. We're going to react live to everything that happened tonight next. We're also brought to you by The Ringer podcast network, put up a new Rewatchables on Monday night. It's American Pie. Me, Sean fantasy, Chris Ryan. This is a complicated movie. That gets weirder. Every year we get away from 1999, but it also made a crapload of money, which is why we decided to throw it into, Wait, how much money did that movie make a month? Still trying to figure out how to do my voice on that. Yeah, so American Pie. We might keep the theme of that month going for a couple more weeks into December, so stay tuned for that. Coming up on this podcast, our guy, Justin Terminay, is going to join us. It's late Tuesday night and we're going to react to in-season tournament craziness. A really fun basketball night. Adam Silver got handed to this dude. We're talking about that. And then after that, Michael Rubin, the head of Fanatics, who comes on every two-plus years to talk about business stuff, sports stuff, just innovation, things that he's seeing in the future.

So he is on. And that's going to be the podcast. It's a good one. First, our friend's from ProJib. All right, typing this, it is 10 o'clock Pacific Time. Just determining our friend from, what is it? Siriusxm NBA Radio. What are we calling it these days?

Boom, you hit it right out of the park. Siriusxm NBA Radio, Bill. Come on, 4:00 to 7:00 Eastern time, you know, with Eddie and myself.

I thought you were on the West Coast, somehow in the East Coast, but you stayed up. This was one of the great random, regular-season NBA nights that I think we've ever had. And it's November 28. This is usually the most dead time of the year. This is when we're thinking about trades and we're trying to blow teams up or saying, should the season start on Christmas? All these little narratives that we have in the first two months of the year, they're gone because the in-season tournament has worked. It's been awesome. How much have you liked it?

Bill, that might be my favorite part is because we're fielding calls from people all day and we're looking to create subject matter. And people are calling in on the Russell Westbrook comments right over the course of the last couple of days, or they're calling about the Popovich stuff, or they're calling about trying to trade, Zach LaVine. I don't like the player movement type of stuff. I'm over and I'm sick of it. Now we're talking about basketball. Eddie and I will pop on the mic here on Wednesday, the day after all these tournament games. People actually want to talk about the games, so I love it. And you know from listening to the times that we go back and forth, I'm not afraid to crush the NBA, even though I'm on NBA radio when I think they deserve it. I'll get on them for load management. I'll get on them for the player movement. I can't say enough about them hitting a home run with this. I love it.

Yeah, and there's some tweaks that they can do that we can talk about. But for the most part, the questions I had going into it, I think you and I saw it the same last summer. It was like, All right, this sounds cool on paper, but why should I care and why will the players care? So fast forward to tonight, we had the Celtics doing a hack-a-shack on Andre Drummond in the fourth quarter, up 32 points so they could try to game the point differential thing so they can get in there. The point is everyone cared. Everyone was into this. The players were trying to win. This Warriors Kings game that we just watched that I can't wait to talk about felt like a game seven of a playoff series. The crowd was going nuts. Both teams were really trying. The Warriors had to win by 12 just to make it didn't matter. It had all the intensity, all the stuff that we've really missed from the regular season with very rare exceptions. And we had it just for six straight hours, and it was great. I just loved it. I was so happy.

Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm not a huge soccer fan, but I care about the World Cup because I see that a lot of people care about it. So I just want the players to care about it. I got into this just because the players cared, we're talking about the Celtics where they go out there and they do that hack-a-drum thing. Then they go back in the locker room and I'm seeing reports that they were celebrating the end of that Nets game. So if the players care about it, then I'm going to care about it, then the fans are going to care about it. And that was the interesting part is they're worried about a Toronto Nets game at the end of November. I'm concerned about a Toronto Nets game at the end of November. Then I got to keep my eye on the Nicks score. I got to keep my eye on Minnesota, Oklahoma City just because of the different outcomes, games that maybe I normally wouldn't care about. And all of a sudden you find yourself caring about it. It's funny because TNT did a good job, Bill, with the different little boxes at the top.

It almost felt like the NCAA Tournament where you're just not focused on your team. You're focused on everything taking place at the same time with all the games taking place at the same time. So I loved even the way it was presented on television.

I had the three TVs going. I had the Nets game going, needed the Nets to win, needed to make sure they didn't win by too much. I didn't bother. I don't know if you did the same thing, but for the most part, I knew what I wanted, but I wasn't going to go nuts about, Oh, the Nets, they're plus 13 right now. Whatever, the chips are going to fall where they may. I think if you're talking about tweaks for how this could have been better, and I really want to talk about some of the games in a second, but it felt like as the tournament went on over the course of a couple of weeks and people started to realize how important the point differential was. The first time I really noticed it was the Orlando Boston game. Orlando had their guys in near the end and they were trying to score. And I was like, Whoa, this is like a part of my brain I had never accessed before during the regular season. And I was like, This is something. Then you really felt that today with the pouring it on late, I think if it's five games, I would go five groups.

I mailed you my idea, five groups instead of six. So you have six teams per group. There's five games per group instead of four. And then I think the point differential is a little easier to figure out. I think if you're going to nit-pick with what they did tonight and this month, there was a lot of three and one teams. And then it comes down to these teams in the fourth game, the Celtics won the lottery. They played this Bulls team that's already ready for the season to end. They blow them out. And it was an advantage that they had that game at that specific time. So I think five games might even that out. Other than that, I'm really happy with the format. Is there anything else you would change?

Agree. I love it. I would have Orlando. I thought it was unfair for them that they didn't know what they needed. So Boston knew what they needed to win by. So I think you got to have every team play on the last day and probably play at the same time just so they know what to do, because I thought that gave Boston a little.

Bit of. Almost like football. When football, we were there and have all the division from the conferences. They all just play at the same time, so there's no way not.

To try basically. Exactly. And they do that like the last day of the NBA season as well, right? The baseball season, just so no team can alter it based off what the end result is elsewhere. So that's an idea. And I like your idea as well, because what you emailed me, it had a lot of teams in the same division. So I'd love to see, Boston, for example, going up against Philadelphia, going up against New York, because then you get the rivalries that are historic and they're in the same conference. So year after year, it's like, oh, Philadelphia got us last year, but we carry that over into the next season. Same thing with the Lakers. Am I supposed to care about Lakers, Oklahoma City? Probably not. There's really no connection there. But I would care if it's Lakers, Clipper's every year. I would care if it was Lakers, Golden State, Lakers, Sacramento. So I love the idea of maybe making it the same divisions every single year, the same groups, and have it done by maybe the divisions.

Yeah, just quickly. I had it by regions. So it was Boston, the New York teams, Philly, Washington, Toronto was group A, and then it goes through. And then you have to crossover with the Miami, Orlando, Charlotte, Atlanta, New Orleans, Memphis. So you're grabbing from both conferences. But for the most part, if you just look at the map, it's pretty easy to see which six teams to cluster. And I'm with you. I think it should be the same teams every year. It adds the fact that even we had Sacramento and Golden State in the same group was important because this is one of the questions I want to ask you tonight. Is that the best rivalry right now? If we're just talking about sheer entertainment with history and baggage of previous series and proximity, that might be the number one rivalry. Because in my head, I want to go, Oh, it's Boston, Milwaukee. But it's like, I don't know. The characters have changed so much in the Boston, Milwaukee. Most of the players are different than they were a couple of years ago. But Golden State, Sacramento feels like it has continuity, right?

I mean, location. You got the Stomp last year from Draymond. You got a series that went seven games. They play a fun style. I'm definitely not going to argue against that. I mean, you could make the argument.

Boston- If the Curry on Sacramento piece, they have to get over this monster that has just owned them for the last three years. It's got a lot going for it.

Yeah, big brother, little brother. Totally. The two in the Eastern Conference, I wouldn't even say Milwaukee, and I'm not really scared of Milwaukee, even though Milwaukee has gotten a little bit hot here as of late. Their defense has major issues, major issues, and I don't even think that's been rectified. They barely beat Portland the other day. They barely beat Washington. Wyth and the other day.

You have a 1:24 tonight with no Jimmy Butler to Miami.

No Jimmy Butler, no Tyler Hero. Kyle Lowry look like he's Oscar Robertson. I don't even know if I consider that the biggest rivalry, even though the Lillard and Drew thing is going to be a ton of fun if we see that in the postseason. Heck, we could see it here in the midseason tournament if both advanced to Vegas. But I would say, like Eastern Conference, Boston, Philadelphia might be a little bit more of a rivalry.

I was thinking of that one. The problem is Boston won every time.

Yeah. So maybe Miami is.

More of a feud.

So Boston, Phil, is more of a feud. I like the history of it. So it's like Boston, Philadelphia, along with Boston Lakers are the two best rivalries in the sport. So I include that in when I'm talking about the rivalries as well.

Yeah. If you're going to recent rivalries, it's probably Boston, Miami, just because they've had big series a bunch of times now. Golden State, Sacramento, I like the longevity of that one. And for whatever reason, the matchup is perfect. It's like watching those Walter White fighters who just have the perfect styles to fight each other. Golden State, that Sacramento even has Monk. Monk is like a little bit of a Curry imposter with his offensive game when he gets going. And Fox has a chance to be a first team all in this year. Although I guess there's like four or five guards that could say that. But we can talk about the Warriors really quick before we keep talking about this tournament. That was a devastating loss for them. I mean, devastating. And it's a season that's been threatening to go the wrong way. The Draymond Soap opera. I'm sure you've spent more than enough time talking about that, but they completely fell apart down the stretch. They were up five with the ball with, I think, like 80 seconds left, dumb turnovers, second chance points for the Kings. And then they end up with a 35-footer to win it when they couldn't even get a good shot.

I thought Draymond was just bizarre down the stretch, playing Clay Thompson over Moody or Looney over Moody when Moody was really good. There was some weird coaching stuff. And that was the first time I thought to myself, Oh, man, Golden State might be a playing team, and even the playing might be lucky for them. What was your take watching them?

Well, so I had Golden State as my seventh seed prior to the season beginning. I wasn't a big fan, and a lot of it was because of their lack of size. It wasn't because I thought that Clay or Wiggins was going to be thrown off a cliff. I do agree with you with the coaching decisions with Moody down the stretch because he was really good, and then all of a sudden, he's out of the game. The part that's got to be concerning about this loss on top of some of the stuff you mentioned is where's Andrew Wiggins been all-season? He's been nowhere. He gave you the best game that he's given you by far. That was by far his best game tonight. You still end up losing. You could also make the argument it was the best game that Clay played. I mean, 20 and 11. Clay has got one 20-point game. So that might be the best game you got from Clay and Wiggins, and you still end up losing it. You blow a big lead. So they're in a lot of trouble. I know that you are doing a list here on the ringer that you were mentioning.

We were texting back and forth like, I won't give it away, but you were doing the top 100 and you got Curry and you're the top of the list. The difference between Curry and I think some of the other guys at the top of the list are he doesn't have that sidekick. Like, Yana says, Lillard. Embiid's got Tyrese Maxey. Yokich has Jamal Murray, Tatum's got J. L. M. Brown, if you think it's him, maybe it's Borzingus. Like, everybody, Anthony Davis and LeBron have each other. Devin Booker and KD have each other. It's a huge drop off from Curry to either Wiggins or Klay. So he's got no sidekick.

Yeah, Draymond is, I guess, technically the second best guy in the team. And he's hit the point now. You saw tonight where he took this elbow. It felt like he flopped a little bit to try to get a flagon or something, they didn't call it. And then he was so mad. He did this crazy karate chop foul thing on I think it was Malik Monk. Yeah. And then staring at the ref and he had already gotten a tectile. And it's like, are you really going to get thrown out of this game? And I thought it was interesting, Kenny Smith called him out on the show tonight before the game, and that's somebody they work with where he's just like, Man, you're not 22, 23, 24 years old anymore. You're a veteran, and it seems like your behavior is getting more erratic. But I think just that soap opera alone is really concerning if I'm a warrior's person. And that's before you get into, is Clay semi-washed? And then the other piece of Wiggins, should you be shocked when Wiggins has 27 points in the game? But where we are right now with him.

Now you are if he has 15 points. If he gets six rebounds, you're shocked. And because you're a Celtic fan. He killed the Celtics on the glass back in the NBA Finals. You don't understand it. And then with the Draymond stuff like, yeah, Kenny saying, It's too late to be apologizing. Now you just got to change your behavior. The thing I get a kick out of with Draymond all the time, Bill, is he's always talking about like, Well, I'm here for my teammates. I'm going to stand up for my teammates. I'm not going to let them down. All right, so we came to the defensive of Clay Thompson, and yeah, it was clearly overboard. But he lets down his teammates every time he puts himself in that position to get suspended. He did it last year in the series against the Sacramento, where he misses a key game. He did it in the finals in 2016. He put him in a situation here tonight where really he could have been ejected. I wouldn't have had an issue if they ejected him because not only did he do that karate chop, but after the official blew the whistle, he then takes another swipe at Monk and then stares down the official.

So if they threw him out, he's putting his team in a bad spot again. So I think he's actually very selfish, to be honest with you.

The bigger issue for them is there's other teams in the west I just think are just definitively better at this point. Minnesota, Denver, when Murray comes back, Phoenix with the way Booker is playing now. And if they can just keep Booker and Durant healthy together, I like that against Golden State. Oklahoma City, especially if they trade one, two or three of their 700 picks and try to add on more guy to what they have. Sacramento is dead-even with them. I'm not crossing off the Lakers. I know they sucked last night, but you know they're going to figure it out. And then New Orleans as the wildcard, just from a talent standpoint, New Orleans has more talent than Golden State. I had them in the Ring or Hundred. I think I had them third. It's not going to matter if nobody else on your team is in the top 50, and that's what we're looking at. New Orleans is loaded with talent. Even when you look at guys like Dyson, Daniels, and when Trey Murphy comes back, these are like kick-ass dudes. And I look at the words and you just think those back-to-back drafts, Wiseman, whatever, it's the COVID draft.

But then the year after, Camingo over Frans is just cut. The combo of those two just going all for two on those picks, basically, which it feels like they did. Yeah. You can't come back from that.

We talked about it over the course of the last couple of days because Lamelo, who just unfortunately got hurt, he's been going off. And you could add him instead of Wiseman in that COVID draft. And then you got Franz Wagner who they passed up on. I mean, Schengun, I don't know if you want to blame him for that, but Schengun is awesome. He'd be perfect there.

Well, Schengun is the best player in the league now. I think you have to.

Blame him a little bit. I mean, he's rising right up there.

As- Jokeage 2.0..

I know. So you've got all those guys that they passed on where they made mistakes in the draft, and then they're just missing the two most important things I think that it takes to win now. And I've heard you talk about this in the pod before. One is just it's no longer like a big three. It's a big two, right? You need a combination. And we already mentioned Curry doesn't have that second guy. And then the other thing is look at all the teams that have won recently. The Lakers back in 2020 did it with size. The Bucks did it with size. Now, Golden State did in 2022, but last year Nuggets did it with size. Why is Orlando winning right now? Well, they're doing it with size. You got to be big, and they just lack size. I mean, it's Kavan, Loney and what? Dario, Sarge? That's not going to cut it once you get into the postseason.

In a league that's gotten bigger and bigger every year. In 2022, the more I look back at it, it was fluky. There was a whole bunch of things going on that that runway for them. And Wiggins was playing way bigger than his size and was rebounding in a real way. And they were able to patch together. And Curry was so great and they were able to grab the title. But I don't think that 2022 team in this current season playing a team like Minnesota, like these teams, their size everywhere. And if you don't have it, I've been saying this for the last few weeks, it's the thing that jumps out to me over and over again. If you don't have size and length, I watched with the Clipperyears yesterday. They got beat by Reggie Jackson and Deandre Jordan, but the Clippers just seemed small. Even trading the Covington and Batom, who aren't deal breakers, they're ninth men, but at least they were two long guys that had some size. Now you watch them and they just seem small everywhere. To me, the Quippers are DOA. I don't see any recipe for them to be a final four team.

They can't guard point guards. They can't guard anyone like Yokeage and beat anybody like that. So what are they?

Bill, if you can't beat the Denver Nuggets on your home floor without Yokeage, Aaron Gordon, and Jamal Murray, who were their three best players, and let's be honest, I think Michael Porter Jr. Went three of 13 in that game last time. He was terrible. He was horrible. You really lost to them on your home floor without their four best players. So if you lost to them on your home floor in one game without their four best players, how the hell are you supposed to beat the Denver Nuggets at a seven-game playoff series where you actually have to go travel and play in Denver where they're impossible to beat, they have no chance. L. A. 'S hopes are over. Meanwhile, they don't have their own pick until 2030. So it might be the biggest mess in the sport.

Well, you see there's seven and nine. Three of the wins are against the Spurs and one's against Portland. And they're three and nine against everybody else. And this is a team that's had Paul, George, and Kauai the whole year. There's been no injury stuff with them yet. They've played. They've gotten 16 full games out of both of those guys. And they're 79. Their schedule hasn't even gotten hard yet. I think that trade, I went all in on how dumb I thought that trade was. And it actually might even be a little bit worse. Us because Russell will be the fall guy. They'll get rid of him over the next two weeks. They'll be like, Yeah, we got to hit our chemistry right. And they'll keep making excuses. Eventually, the Axel fall on Tairo or Lawrence Frank, and they'll keep blaming people. But the reality is something you and I always talk about on our shows. Once you're letting the players make transactions for you, you're screwed. When has that ever worked? It certainly didn't work with LeBron when he forced the Lakers to trade Westbrook that time. Why are you listening to your players? This is not a recipe for success.

If the Celtics listen to Tatum, who loves Bradley Beale, they'd have Bradley Beale instead of Porzingis and Drew Holiday. That's how they would use that giant cap figure. But guess what? Tatum respects the organization. He wasn't going to push for it. And they were smart enough to be like, Dude, let us handle this. But he wanted Bradley Beale for two years. Would Bradley Beale be good on the Celtics team? No, you can't listen to your players.

No, they might have given Harry Giles $100 million to if they were listening to Tatum.

They still might.

Don't ruin it. But look at the other LA team. It's like they go out and they get Russell Westbrook, even though they could have made smaller moves, then they move away from Russell Westbrook and they go on a run last year just because they got players that actually fit a role. And you have to have different guys that fit a role. Like no matter what the field is, I mean, it could be broadcasting if you're teaming up, like I work with Eddie, right? If I worked with another guy that was just like me, the show wouldn't be as good. Even if the guy was really talented, you got to have guys that set picks. You got to have guys that are willing to die after. Don't compliment, Eddie. Stop it. Yeah, well, I didn't mean to. It's a little bit later on the East Coast. That's probably the reason. I know you're groggy. I'm delirious. But you got to have guys that fill different roles, and they got four guys that need the ball. You could have four great players and they'll work together. If there are guys like John Habelcheck, late Thompson, Steph Curry, Yokey, guys that don't need the basketball, guys that touch it, Hidalbert, but these guys and everybody needs the ball in Los Angeles, plus they have no size.

So it was a disaster.

But the thing is we said that when they made the trade. So what are you going to do? All four of these guys succeed when they have the ball and now you have them all together. What do you think is.

Going to happen? Yeah. So I can't be a complete hypocrite. Now, I didn't think it would work, but I also said I didn't mind them going in and making the hard and move just because I didn't think they could win the championship before. So why not just do this since you were already all in? Who cares about two extra picks when you're going to be a disaster anyway if these guys end up leaving? So I did say to do it only because I didn't think they were good enough before, and now they're certainly not good enough either. So they lost.

A couple of extra picks. So you're going to take the loss on that one. We're going to take a break and I want to play a little game called sports radio arguments. Ball out this NBA season with FanDuel, America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers get $150 of bonus bets with any winning $5 money line bet. That is $150. If your team wins, you can even jump in on the in-season tournament. Boston is playing Indiana on Tuesday. In Indiana, I like the Celtics, they're going to have their full team. I also like the Over. Whatever the Over is, just do Boston and the Over. You're good to go. If you've been thinking about joining Fando, there's no better time to join than right now. Quick bets, live same game, parlay, parlay hub. The app has it all. Visit fando. Com/bs, turn dimes at the dollars this season. Fando, official sportsbook partner of the NBA. First online real money wage or only $5 pre-game money line wage or required. First online real money wage or only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issues, not withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook.

Fando. Com. All right, coming back. So our eight games are really good, by the way, for this in-season tournament. Nicks Bucks, Celtics at Pacers, Suns at Lakers, and Pelicans at Kings. So I guess if you're talking about, Oh, it'll be so much fun if there's not one of the actual contenders into it. That's basically the Pacers. The Pelicans are a fun, young team. Oh, my God. Look at them. It's New Orleans. But you also have major stars, right? You have Iannis and Daim. You have all the Celtic guys. You have Durant and Booker. You have LeBron and the artists formerly known as KD. You have Zion, Fox. They're stars everywhere. So this is perfect for them. And then next week they'll have the quarter finals, which will be even more fun than it was tonight. Then we'll go to Vegas for that. I know you're going to Vegas, right? I'm sure for the semis.

I'm not going for the I'm going for your podcast on Wednesday night, prior to the semis. Oh, fun. Yeah. And then I'm going to leave. No, I'll stick around. I'll stick.

Around for the game. Well, the semis are going to be awesome. The only thing I could compare it to is I went to the Olympics in 2012, and there was a quarter finals where it was just four games in a row of do or die Olympics games with basically all the good players in all the countries. And it was awesome. And then semifinal, same thing. It was two games to get to the gold medal games in a row. And it was fucking awesome. And I'm hoping if the players are going to play as hard as they did tonight, I think this Vegas thing will be a home run. Plus, the All-Star Game, the All-Star Game sucks. We have to go. There's a lot of corporate stuff. The players are just moving around. You're setting up a booth there. And it's not really about basketball. It's about the circus around basketball. This is going to be about basketball. But then it'll have the same vibe of all these people who love basketball who work in the industry, they'll all be there. I think it's going to be really cool.

Yeah, I'd leave before the All-Star Game, so I don't even go to the game. I go to All-Star weekend, but I'm not into the game for obvious reasons. It's horrible. And I'm going to go to all these. I can't wait to get there. It'll be interesting, though, because you go out to Vegas for Summer League and it's a heavy Lakers crowd. They still got to win one more game over Phoenix in order to get out there. But I'm interested to see what the environment is going to be out like there. And if LA does get there, it's going to be a heavy home crowd for the Lakers just because clearly LA is just right down the road.

Well, that's a nice match up for the Suns because this Lakers team, they're just missing too many glue guys, right? To have it at Vanderbilt all season, they lose Gabe, Vincent pretty fast. It just seems like they're mixing and matching. They have a lot of trouble defending other teams' wings. Lebron can't play wing anymore. I mean, he's basically a power forward at this point. So their team isn't really set yet. And the Suns are now, they had this little Durant run at the start of the year. Now, Booker has been awesome for two weeks. That leads me to my first sports radio argument, which you had with Eddie, which is Tatum or Booker. So I'm doing my Ringer top 100, and I got to the six spot, which is where I had Tatum. And I started thinking, is Devon Booker better than Tatum? But then I thought about the playoff exits and Tatum, the fact what a great rebounder he's been. I mean, he's an unbelievable rebounder for his position. I think he's like third in the League for rebounding out of all non-centers. And I do think he's gotten better every year and he's added stuff, and I like where he is.

But the Booker thing, it's an argument. So I'm sure Eddie was on the Booker side. Where were you on Tatum versus Booker?

I was on the Tatum side. Now, speaking of elimination games, I got the numbers right here because Eddie and I just had the argument. Booker and elimination games. He's played in three of them. He's averaging 14 points on 31 % off from the floor. Tatum, I think, was somewhere up around 26 points per game included. He's had a 51-point game. Bookers played last year against Philadelphia in game seven, right? Then he had the 46-point game against Philadelphia or Milwaukee on the road the year they went to the.

Finals.

Booker has never even scored 46 points in all three of his elimination games combined. So that was one argument I used against Eddie. That's odd. Because the Tatom has been better in a bigger spot. And then clearly you've got the rebounding, you've got the defense, heavy advantage to Tatom in both those categories, even though Booker has improved dramatically defensively. I want to give him credit for that. Booker is a better playmaker, I think, at this point as well. Ultimately, Eddie's big argument was efficiency, and I do view Booker as the better score. I don't know how you view that. I do view Booker as the better score. But if you look at effective field goal percentage, which accumulates everything across the board, Tatom actually has the advantage there. So I do lean Tatum. But if you're making a list of the 10 best players in the sport, in all likelihood, you got them back to back with Tatum maybe one spot ahead of Booker.

Yeah, I had the list I handed in, and we're running our... We combine all the rankings of different voters, but I had Yoke, Giannis, Curry, they didn't beat four over Luca. Luca had five, Tatum, six, Booker Seven, SGA eight, Durant, nine. And then I had Jimmy Butler as my 10th. You have LeBron as your 10th, right? You still have LeBron as a top 10. I had LeBron 12th. The defense with him, I just care about defense. It called me nuts, but I just factor it in. And that's why Itell you, even Tatum over Booker, I like even Tateem over Booker. I like the fact that Tatum, when he really dials it up, he's an excellent defender, but he can play different positions. He can help you on the boards. And that's just enough for a slight edge. But LeBron, in that Philly game last night, the whole team wasn't playing defense, but his guy over and over again was shooting wide open threes. I do feel like LeBron slips into DH mode a lot. Is it the difference between being a top 10 guy and a top 12 guy? Everybody is so afraid to criticize LeBron, and they should be because he's played more minutes than anyone in the history of the league.

I'm just measuring him right now against all these other dudes game after game after game. If it's a playoff game, he probably moves up. But if you're just talking about regular season top 100, I can't have him in the top 10, but you had him.

I got him at 10. He's an abysmal defender. He doesn't care about it at all. And you care about defense. I care about defense as well. But one other thing I care about is I care about build the regular season. And Jimmy Butler doesn't care about the.

Regular season.

He sat out tonight. He sat out tonight in a midseason tournament game, okay? And he's yet to play, by the way. The rule, I want to give the NBA a lot of credit, even both clippers. Paul, George, and Kauai have played in every single game so far. So Joe Du Mar is Hey, get everybody out there. It's an 82 game season. It's worked for a lot of guys. Jimmy Butler has had three back-to-backs. He's yet to play in one of the back-to-backs. One of them was rest at the beginning of the season. Then it was a personal issue. Then it was this ankle issue that he had. So I care about the regular season, and you watched it growing up, right? Bird kicked your ass for 82 games in the regular season. Then he kicked your ass again for what, 20-playoff games? Magic Jordan kicked your ass 82 games. Not 70 games, not 50. 82 games that kick your ass for 20 more.

You're so old school. Look at this.

Jimmy Butler doesn't do that, so I can't put him up there on the list. That's my reason against Jimmy Butler.

Bird did it, and then he was wearing a back brace during games by 1991. I had Butler 10th because I wanted to keep some connective tissue to what happened last year. And the fact that he dragged that Miami team to the finals last year and beat Boston and ran through Milwaukee, I'm just not going to let that go. You have to be a top 10 guy after that. So I just couldn't knock them out. Anyway, Tudum versus Booker, they're around the same age. Koc and Verner did a great thing on their pod today about the MVP ads.

That- I heard it.

Yeah, Yokeage is the obvious bet, and Yokeage is going to win if he plays 70 games, I think, because he's just so overpowering. But Booker was 26 to 1 when they did the pod. And it's a good... If you're talking about long shot bets, I'm not allowed to bet on the award, neither are you. But if you're just talking about long shot guys that could rise up as the season goes, I do think he's a good candidate for that.

No doubt about it. I mean, because what do they want? Seven straight games since he's come back. They're winning when he's out there on the floor. I think he's already missed eight or nine games.

And he's carrying teams by himself and games. He's hitting all the check marks.

I remember on Austin Rivers, who also does a podcast for you guys, said that Booker was the better player than KD, and he said it was without question heading into the season. I feel the same way. Now, KD has been awesome. He looked like he was maybe cooked in that first game of the season. And I remember even you talked about it. I talked about it as well. In that first game where it was Phoenix and Golden State, he's been awesome since then. Certainly deserves to be in the conversation on the periphery of the MVP. But to me, Booker is the better of the two players. But you're right with Jokic. You're doing your list. And to me, you could say Steph's better than Yanesh. You could say Embiid's better than Steph, whatever. I got Tatum ahead of Luca because I don't like the heliocentric way that he plays. I don't think you can win that way.

But.

The gap between Jokic and everybody else, there's no argument. That gap is huge. I heard Scalabrini, who does a show in the morning with Isolla on our station. I've heard it. Just hopefully not too much of it.

But anyway, the coffee hasn't kicked in yet. So it's a little incoherent. But I think it's the non-coffee.

Exactly. Yeah, if you don't have coffee, it's fine to listen to. But once you get your day started, you got to move on. Either way, he said the gap between Jokic and the rest of the League bill is as big as, and I happen to agree with this, as big as it was when LeBron in Miami and the rest of the League then. He said that, I think, last year at some point-.

That's a great point. So like in 2012, '13, LeBron, compared to Carmelo was the number two MVP candidate in 2013. Yeah, I think that's fair because I think what makes Yokaj... Man, I can't believe we're talking about Yokaj, and it's only the 30-minute mark. People would have thought this sooner. I think what makes him... I mean, there's a million things that make him special. He's so fucking consistent. And that's what Magic and Jordan had, especially as we got into the late '80s and the early '90s. It's just game after game. It's the same. It never wavers. He's always the best guy on the floor doing the most things, keeping his team around. And sometimes he scores more. Sometimes he passes more. But you pick a guy and you might catch them on the wrong night and they're just not that good. You might catch an Embiid night where it's like, Oh, Embiid doesn't have it tonight. You just don't see it with Jokic. It's just he's almost like a hockey player. He just skates around and fucking gets his shots on goal and that's it.

You almost had a throw away line a couple of weeks ago where I think you were coming in on a break and you said he might be the greatest offensive player I've ever seen. I don't know if you remember saying that.

I think.

He is. Yeah. I agree with you. And people, well, you overreact, I protect the Legends. I went at JJ Reddyk with the whole Bob Kuzie thing a couple of years ago. I protect the Legends. I love the history of the sport. That's one of the reasons I was initially hesitant on the in-season tournament. But Jokic in regards to being able to get his own and make people better. And that's what I look. I don't look at when Darryl Morris saying, Oh, the greatest offensive player ever is James Harden. I don't look at his offense as scoring. I look at it as number one is making everybody better. And that guy makes everybody better to the same level that Magic did it to the same level that Bird did it. He's on the upper tier of doing that.

Well, I thought it was interesting when he's not in the game. Like yesterday, he doesn't play in the quipper game, and the team still takes his identity and they're still unselfish and they're still doing the same stuff. That's what Bird and Magic had done more than anything. All right, next sports radio argument. Has the ship permanently sailed on Anthony Davis being a top seven, eight guy?

It probably should. And I think the distinction probably came maybe yesterday, Bill, because think if we're talking about some of the former greats, like the Magic Bird, Jordan, you can throw Kobe into the list. If the backup to guard says about Kobe Bryant, all the guy does is flop. What is he going to go out there and do? He's probably going to put up a pretty big.

Staff on- He's going to take it personally.

Or he's going to have at the very least, even if Paul Reed doesn't say that or somebody say it about Kobe, those guys are going to say, You know what? I'm going up against the MVP from last year. I'm going to be super-focused on this game. I'm going to have it circled, right? And even if I fail, I'm going to take more than 14 shots. I'm going to be aggressive. So Anthony Davis talks crap about Jokic and the Denver Nuggets leading into the first game of the season. And Jokic hands him a triple-double, hands him a loss. Then he's got an opportunity to go up against Embiid here. Embiid's the other great big. And Embiid doesn't even have to play four quarters. He exits after three quarters. He gets a triple-double. So this guy is supposed to be like, I picked him to be the defense player of the year at the beginning of the season, Anthony Davis. Yet he allows Jokic, he allows Embiid both to record triple doubles and severely outplay him. It's massively disappointing. And the other way you look at it is like LeBron basically handpicked him to be his guy, right?

Can you imagine if he handpicked Embiid, if he handpicked Jokic to be his guy? He'd have multiple championships out there in Los Angeles.

And that.

Should tell you the difference between Yokitch and Anthony Davis and Embiid and Anthony Davis and Giannis and Anthony Davis. A couple of years ago, I think Rich Paul said, Well, if Anthony Davis played on the 2019 Box, they would have won the NBA Championship. Anthony Davis is not capable of being the best player on the team. The guy gets to be the sidekick of arguably the greatest player of all time, and he's still frustrates you immensely. Imagine if he had to be the guy or imagine he was the sidekick to somebody that wasn't LeBron, it would be even worse. So yeah, I think that ship is... What do you think? I think it's sailed.

Yeah, it sailed for me a while ago, and there's always a lot of hype that comes with this is going to be the year or this is his moment. It just feels like we're doing this year after year after year, the durability thing. He hasn't really gotten hurt this year. Remember the pivotal in the finals? It seemed like he was having his moment against Miami in the bubble. And he had that huge game. I can't remember. It was game three or game four. And there was a couple of days off or a day off or whatever it was. And it was all the Anthony Davis stuff. And I remember doing it on my podcast. It's happened. He's here. This is it. This is our next great big guy. He's having his moment. He's putting his stamp down. And this is where we are headed going forward as the Anthony Davis era. And then the next game, he sucked. Do you remember that? I think it was game five. Yeah. And it was like we just spent two days being like, this is it. This is happening. And then he just no-showed the next game. They ended up winning anyway, I think, the game after.

But I remember thinking, That's not a good sign. Whereas compared to Giannis heading in the game six of the 21 Finals, it's like, Oh, Giannis, can he do it? Can he get any plays the greatest game of his life. It just feels like every time there's been a chance for Davis to have that moment, to have his Oscar movie, to have his great season, something's always gotten in the way. And at some point, you are who you are. It's going to be 31 later in this season. And I don't know if he has the competitive intensity that the great, great, great guys have. I even think Embiid has it way more than Davis does. Once that hard and trade got settled, Embiid is the most locked in. He's more locked in than he was last season. I love the way he's playing.

This is the best he's looked in his entire career. He's playing like Jokic, like the style, right? Yeah. He had what, 11 assists through three quarters yesterday? He's averaging over six a game. I think it's a combination of, Hey, I don't have to play with Ben Simmons who needed the ball. I need to play with James Harden. We're now running the.

Offense through me. No more soap operas. No more mootiness.

Exactly. And a little bit of the nick Nurse system as well. So all that coming into play at the same time and Maxi emerging, it's led to him being the best of his career. But on the Anthony Davis thing, you have to be consistent. I wouldn't get on his case if he didn't have the talent, and we wouldn't get on his case if they weren't hyping him up. Lebron, earlier this year, Bill said, Well, he's one of the Great Laker Biggs. Well, if you're one of the Great Laker Biggs- Is he? Exactly. No, he's not. Because if you are, that means you're in Shaq's category, you're in Wilt's category, you're in Kareems, you're in Mikens, and he clearly doesn't belong in that conversation. And then you got Darvin Hamel after a game. I think he calls him Wilt Davis every now and again. So you're the reason we're getting on his case because you'recomparing them to Wilk, you're comparing them to Wilt, you're comparing him to Mikens, you're comparing him to Shaq. And if you're going to compare them to those guys and you're there, then I from the outside, you from the outside can go like, well, you're not living up to what everybody is saying you are.

And I don't want to play center. Even the stuff he was saying this year about we got Christian Wood. Now I don't have to spend as much time getting switched on the guards. It's like, hey, nobody else complains like this about being a seven-foot guy in a league. That's the biggest advantage if you're athletic that possibly anybody has. But yeah, it's frustrating because I thought the Lakers are going to be really good and I'm not ready to write them off by any means. I still think they're going to get there. They'll figure it out. They're going to make a big trade. They have a lot of different pieces. They have a couple of rookies that I think people like. They still have a pick. They have some contracts they can put together. Whether it's a Zach LaVine type of trade, I think that would be a major mistake. Like just to go get somebody else who has... We have no idea if the guy can come through in a playoff series, but could they be the Carusso team? It's going to be them or Philly. I would say it would be probably the two biggest candidates who have stuff to trade.

I think the ship has sailed for me to answer my own question. Oh, my next sports-related argument, would you trade for Zach LaVine?

Well, I hope the Lakers do as somebody that's not rooting for a LeBron- Somebody who's not a Laker fan. Exactly. Same thing with Philadelphia. If you're rooting against Philadelphia, I want them to trade for him because think about Philadelphia, the way the ball is moving, the offensive hierarchy where you know Embiid's your number one guy, that is clear. You know that Tyrese Max is your number two guy, that is clear. You know Tobias Harris is your number three guy, that is clear. And it all trickles down from there. You bring in Zach LaVine, do you think Zach LaVine is going to think that... No, he's not going to think he's embied, but do you think Zach LaVine is going to say, I need to take a back seat to Tyrese Maxey? I don't think like he would.

Necessarily- They're not going to do that. I don't see them doing it.

Exactly. So I don't see them doing that, and I don't think that they should do that. By the.

Way, what is the Zach LaVine team? I was going through all the rosters.

What do you think about Orlando, for example, where they got a burst of guards. We didn't do.

You think? Orlando has made their bones on defense, and we haven't seen that guy play defense. To me, it's a team. It's like a Charlotte, where they had the Hayward expiring. And maybe you wouldn't have to give up that much. Maybe it's like a Bradley, Beale-type trade where the other team just wants to get out of the contract and you can throw them with the Melo and see what it looks like. But you go through all the rosters and it's, could Utah be a potential team? I don't know where that gets them. It's just so funny. We're like, where is the Zycliffe trade? Where is it going to be? And Isways, anytime I hear somebody say that, I'm like, have you gone through all the rosters? Because somebody's got to have the 40 million or so to give back. They have to have the pick. It's got to make sense for them. It's got to be a team that's willing to take a chance on a guy who's never been in a winning situation ever, who doesn't seem like he wants to play defense, who seems so unhappy tonight. That Bulls team was the most unhappy.

I had a couple of friends in that game. They were like, Oh, my God, this Bulls team was like, miserable. So you're trading for somebody who's in a miserable situation. Why? You're the best player on the team. Why is your team miserable? That's a stay away for me.

No, I agree. Like of DeRosen, LaVine, and Caroso, he's the guy that's going to be the hardest to move. He'll get the least probably four because of the contract, because of the knees, because of the defense. And he's got that tunnel vision, where he doesn't make anybody better. We're talking about Jokic is the best player in the sport. Why? Well, not only because he can get his own, he makes everybody better. Why is Curry one of the great players of all time? Not only because he can get his own, he makes everybody better. Zack LaVine doesn't make anybody better. Now, in fairness, like if he was in Miami, if he was in Boston, if he was in Golden State, would he have been developed differently? Would he play differently? Would he be viewed differently? Yeah, probably to some extent. He probably could win there, but he doesn't make anybody better. That to me is not a winning player, especially at that money, plus the no defense. So I wouldn't take a shot on Zach LaVine, no.

He culture?

He culture. They could turn him around, you're guaranteed. But again, they're going to ask for them for free because you're not allowed to. They don't have to give anything up, right? We'll take Damian, Luthor, you have to give them to us, but we're not going to give you anything in return as long as you understand that.

Well, remember that Jovitch was a big prize for them in the Dave Levered sweepstakes. By the way, he hasn't been seen since. You can watch him in the G League. He was one of their big prizes. All right, last one. Will Halbert become the best Pacer ever? I'm putting this on a platter for you.

Because you touched on this. I treated that out a couple of... You look at... So Mel Daniels, if you want to go back to the ABA days, he's got a couple of MVP, he's got a championship. So if you want to include that, you can certainly make the argument for Mel Daniels. I don't know how you view the ABA stuff and whether that should count. So you want to count him? Maybe you can make the argument, no. I think it's not the most... It's not like he's playing for the Lakers, not like he's playing for the Celtics, not like he's playing for the Heat of the Sixers. His competition is Reggie Miller. So you tell me, can Tyrese Halliburt be Reggie Miller? What, four or five All-Star games? Reggie Miller never made a second team All-NBA. Halliburt can make a second team All-NBA this year. So if you think he can be Reggie Miller, which I think he can be, then I think he's got a chance to be the greatest pacer of all time if he sticks around. What do you think?

I did a book of basketball pot on Reggie, and I pulled out some of the stuff I did. Yeah, third team all NBA three times in the middle 90s, which was probably one of the weaker talent stretches in the league, 25,000 points, five All-Star games. His three-year peak was 22 points, three rebounds, three assists a game. Now, slower pace, all that stuff. Two-year playoff peak was 24 points. He was a 50-49 guy twice. Statistically, it looks pretty good for the era, and he was way ahead of his time with the threes. But the fact that he never made even a second team all NBA is pretty alarming if you're talking big picture stuff. And that was why I always had Ray Allen ahead of him because I always felt like Ray Allen's best season was just better than Reggie Miller's best season. If you go to '05 Sonics or the '01 Bucks, he just had a higher ceiling. And then he was able to reinvent himself the second part of his career. To me, I'm like, Ray Allen over Reggie in that. I think Reggie is still top 75 to me. I don't think it's going to take much for Halbert.

And if he stays there 10 years, he stays healthy. He could make first team of NBA this year. He's another guy whose hat's in the ring. And I think he's a guy bringing it back to the in-season. That could be a really special week for him. Like if they beat the Celtics on Tuesday, you're in the semifinals. There's a lot of people... We all watch all these games, but normal sports fans have not watched a lot of Pacers this year.

They have one nationally televised game, so it should be on more, and that'll give them that. They're already going to have another one because they're going to be in this midseason tournament. They're going to play a nationally televised game. Then they get to go to Las Vegas. They'll play more of them. And on the Reggie thing, you always get the comparison not just to Ray Allen but to Clay. I think Reggie is the third guy on that ladder behind Clay and behind Ray Allen. I think he's third. And then you also talk about like-.

Well, I'll tell you the thing with Reggie. This is what we talked about in the Book of Basketball Podcast. And why I would defend Reggie, even though I didn't seem like I was just now. His superpower was he carried himself like he was as good as whoever the best guys there was in the other team. And he carried himself like that. Whether it was Jordan, whether it was Kobe, pick a guy. If Reggie was on the other side, Reggie is like, I'm as good as that guy. And he really believed it. And that's how he played and that's how he carried himself. And it was effective. And you look at some of those Pacers teams, they overachieved. They had big wins. They had big upset wins. And part of it was how he carried himself, especially at the end of the games. And that's something that doesn't, if you're looking at basketball reference, it's just not come up there. You had to watch it and see it. And that's a really special quality. So I would defend them on that. But I just think if you're never a top 10 guy in the League, that's a tough one.

Well, speaking of basketball reference, that's what I was going to say, too. I like the idea you had to be there because it's the same thing with Russell and Wilt. If you just look at basketball reference, you're going to go, Oh, well, Wilt over Russell. And you did a pretty good job in your book as to explaining why. And then you get the guys like Bob Ryan who were around to see it, and they can go more in-depth with that.

But.

Someday we're going to look at basketball reference, we're going to see like, Oh, well, Russell only made what, four first team All-NBAs, I believe? And the reason for that is because they could only have one center. I don't like the idea that they're changing this thing up. And that has to do with Halbert as well. So Haliburton now, he could make first team or second team. But does that necessarily mean he's like the third best guard? It doesn't necessarily mean that. We had that.

With the forwards in the 2000s? We had this issue where there was KG and Dirk and Duncan. Yeah, you just look at the guards right now and then we'll end on this. But Curry, is Luca a guard? I always forget, is he a guard or a forward? I guess he counts as a.

Guard in the.

Nba, right? Yeah, well, he's dribbling the ball non-stop, so he's a guard.

So Curry, Luca, SGA, Booker, Anthony Edwards, and Haliburton are are all in the mix.

Exactly. They're going to be a higher seed maybe, or a higher vote on the All-NBA just because there's no guards. We're not going to have any centers, and we're not going to have any forwards. It messes it all up.

I like the Deere and Fox. That's the other one.

So Fox deserves to be in that conversation. I just like to be able to say, you know what? Bob Kuzi was the best guard or one of the two best guards 10 times in his career. Chris Paul only did it four or five times. You can't do that anymore moving forward. So I guess we started to build a podcast with me saying I like this new initiative by the NBA with the midseason tournament. But then I'll go back into curmudgeon form and say I hate that change that the NBA made with the way we're going to vote on all.

Nba teams. Well, our guy, Shane Goon, really loses because he's behind Yoke and then B to maybe even be him out of bio. He might not even get all NBA, and he's the best part in the league. I don't know how that happens.

Yeah, we could put all centers in the top five. First team, all centers.

Did you see the stat that Joe Mazula is one of the only two coaches ever after 100 games to have a 70 % winning percentage?

Somebody sent that to me and I had to call a time-out because it shocked me so much. So I called a little time-out.

Joe Mez, 71 and 29 lifetime. All right, Terminay, are you with Eddie Johnson tomorrow?

I am. Eddie took the day off today. We brought in Sam Mitchell, or I think, as you referred to him at one point, Mike Woodson. So Mike Woodson and Sam Mitchell, they're very interchangeable. But yes, Eddie is going to be back on the show here to break down the mid-season tournament.

All right. Please give him my worst and tell him to settle down on the sons. Justin, good to see you.

I'm very nervous about Phoenix making a run here to the midseason tournament. He's going to act like it's winning an NBA Championship or they win, Bill. Let's keep our fingers crossed it doesn't happen.

All right. Thanks for coming up.

Thanks, Bill.

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Maybe.

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I thought you love me more and wanted me every year, but I'm on your two and a half year cycle. I got to become more important.

To you. This is good. Well, I want it to be special every time you're on. I'm always interested in what you're up to because it feels like you're at the cortex of all these different sports things that I care about. But just it's sports fans something. It's not quite Amazon, but it's all these different pieces of things that I care about as a sports fan. And you just keep adding. And every time you add, I'm like, Oh, that makes sense.

Well, right now we've taken a lot on. I think as a company, Fanatics has an incredible opportunity. We feel like we're just in the early, early innings of this game, which seems crazy. People are looking there like, Oh, Finadex has become somewhat of a big company. We feel like an entrepreneurial baby company just getting going. I'll tell you, we're in three business. We're in what we call Fanatics Commerce, which is really a merchandise business. That's where we started. We have Fanatics Collectibles, which is primarily the trading card business. Then we have Fanatics Gaming, which is our online sports betting and iGaming business. And all three businesses are pretty early on and we got a lot to do.

So is this one of those things where you're nailing the merchandise side and then you're like, All right, what else can we add? What else is out there? Or is there some master plan that you can't totally reveal yet?

Well, there is a master plan that we can reveal. I'd say we're nailing nothing so far because we need to be better at everything that we do. Look, our vision is how do we give the digital sports fan anything they want in one place? What's our dream? In five years or 10 years from now, you go to the Fanatic sports app and you can do anything you want. You can buy your merchandise, you can get your collectibles, buy them, trade them. You can bet on sports. You can get tickets in one place. You can watch live sports. You could do it all in one place and really give that digital sports fan anything they want in one place. I think we're 20 % into that journey so far, 15 % of that journey. Our business we've been in the longest is Finastra Commerce, which is the merchandise business. But we have so much to do in that business as well. I still think maybe we're a third of the way into that business.

What have you done that you wish you were better at on the merch? Because it seems like the merch side of things.

I wish we were better at everything. But look, for my perspective, everything you do, you need to be unreliant and to be better at. I think as we get bigger and we have more scare, we recognize the opportunity to be that much better. So what are the things I really want to do? Number one, I think what we've done in the merchandise business is the same thing that had been done better. What we haven't done is just broken through from an innovation perspective. So I think-.

What is innovation, man?

Yeah, from a product perspective. When we deliver incredible products to consumers, they react and they buy. And so when we put really special things out there, the customer responds and they react, we need to do a lot more of that. I'd say the licensed sports business historically has been an evergreen business. People want to buy jerseys, they want to buy T-shirts, they want to buy hoodies, they want to buy hats. What we see is when you design incredible products, then there's incredible demand for that. An example would be just a few weeks ago, we had a Princess Diana, Mitchell Ness Eagles jacket. And we did that in a limited drop. I think we had 2,400 units of it, and it was gone in 10 minutes. And it was so much fan demand for that jacket. And then you say, Okay, well, what are the other things I can do? And so my point is we want to drive the business through innovative product. We had.

A- So you're talking instead of just concentrating on scale, stuff that's also cool and maybe there's only 2,000 things of it.

Yeah. If you look at Nike, these business, they have a big business, but they do a lot of really innovative things. I'm wearing Travis Scott's shoes today. Every time he drops a shoe, that's a shoe that there's tremendous demand for.

So I think-So you think that could translate to... So if there's like the Red Sox Win the World series and there's 500 T-shirts.

Well, you could do multiple. When the Red Sox Win the World Series, certainly we're going to have the more traditional T-shirt and hoodie and hat. But the question is, do we do a special edition Mitchell Ness jacket drop and a special edition hoodie drop? And do we do a collab with someone who makes a tremendous amount of sense in that market. Right. So there's a lot of interesting things you can do. I think from a consumer experience, today we own, a lot of people don't know this, but we have, in addition to the fanatic site and the league sites that we operate, we also are the majority owner of Lids. We make today the Nike merchandise in the NFL and in Major League Baseball and in NCAA starting next year. But we want to keep expanding the assortments, broadening what we do. I think to be honest, I wear one type of clothing. I like to be a little bit more fashionable now. I don't always find things that I want from what we sell. So we need to have more culturally relevant product that we're selling. I just had somebody at my house an hour ago who talked about doing a really interesting collab with Mitchell and Nest.

So I think there is a big opportunity to drive through product innovation. And then from a consumer experience perspective, we have a big opportunity to just go from good to great. We've been better than everybody else, but that's been good. We haven't been great. We need to be great. That means when you buy from us, how the package gets delivered to you, the speed that it comes to you. And by the way, as a company that's grown a lot, we've also done some dumb things over the years, too. And so what do I wish.

We'd be done different-What's a dumb thing?

Give me an example. I think we want to cover all sports fans. So certain fans want to lower in T-shirts and maybe we sold 1999 T-shirts. Maybe we just shouldn't have been in that business because they weren't high enough quality as an example. Got you. And so we're always looking at ourselves saying, How can we be better? How can we deliver better for the fan? How can we innovate for the fan both on the consumer experience and on the product side? And that's in our biggest business, which has grown from a $250 million business to almost a $6 billion business today. And I feel like we're just getting started. We have so much to do to be better.

So this was happening in shoes, really starting the mid-2010s. Kanye was pushing the envelope a little bit, the Travis Scottz. Are you watching this going, What's our version of this? Can this translate? What does it look like?

I'm definitely studying it, paying attention to everything and saying, How can we bring that into this business where there's been no innovation like that before? What we've seen is when we do great things, consumers react in the most positive way. And by the way, when you screw things up, fans tell you as well. We sold... Just... I'll just give you an example because I like to be hard on myself. We sold four million units of the Equals of Power in the last 12 months. We had a T-shirt that came out that got misprinted by one of our factory partners. And we had 36 units that were misprinted out of four million and fans killed us. But you know what? They deserve to have perfection and that's what they want. And I agree to that. And so we always need to keep pushing ourselves to be better.

How do you think as we head into the mid 2020s, who are the competitors that are coming up? Are you learning anything from people that are trying to challenge you or you feel like you have almost a monopoly at this point?

No, we don't think we have a monopoly in any way, shape or form. I think this is a highly competitive market. It's a $30 billion global market today. We have about 20 % of that. And I'd say what I want to do is learn from people outside of the licensed sports market because I don't think there's enough innovation within the licensed sports market. What I want to do is see what's happening in fashion, what's happening in performance. How do I study all the different things and how do we bring those into our category? So you talked about Treyv as an artist who is one of the most best consumer products people on the planet. Treyv and I spend a lot of time talking about what we can do together in the sports business. And there are many other relationships, companies, brands that we think we could bring into this category to bring a lot of innovation.

So that's one of your specialties is the athlete relationships. But I haven't really seen that translate into-.

Stay tuned.

-merchandise.

Yeah, stay tuned. Yeah, absolutely.

What does that look like? Like a clothing line or specific.

Things or quick sales? What is it? I think you're going to see several things. I'd say what are our goals in that business in the next couple of years? One is again to take just the everyday consumer experience for that Evergreen fan from good to great. I think we serve most fans very well, but we're not perfect and we need to be better in everything that we do, and that's our responsibility. The second thing is, I think from a product perspective, I think we have a big opportunity to bring artists, athlete collaborations, and other great brands into the business. We found we've brought other great brands into the business. We've had incredible success. I'll just give you a small example. Vineyard Vines, they never made licensed sports. I met the guy in the Bahamas. He came up to me and said, Hey, I own Vineyard Vines. I want to make licensed sports. Great. Now that's a big business. We do that together. There are so many examples if you go brand by brand. I don't want to give out things that we're doing that we haven't publicly announced yet, but there will be brand collaborations, artist collaborations, athlete collaborations that I think can really move the needle with innovative product that can add a whole new layer of growth onto the business that fans will be so excited about.

Well, you also have this work chest of mailing lists. How many people do you have the information on at this point? 150 million? We have.

Over 100 million fans today.

How much do you know about their habits at.

This point? I look at that and say we're just getting started because there's eight billion people-ish in this world. So billions of them are sports fans and they should all be fans of Fanatics. And so we have a lot of work to do. We want to become a beloved brand. Today I think, Fanatics has been too transactional. We want to just... You want to go out and get a Patrick the Homes jersey, a CJ Strauss jersey to come to Finax. But we haven't become that beloved brand. We have a lot to do to earn that from a customer. But that's what we're working hard to do.

What is the mailing list? What are the advantages of that other than the obvious ones?

Yeah, well, I think you can really best serve a fan because you can personalize. You know what that fan wants. You shouldn't go to the Finax site or the NFL shop and have an experience that's not completely custom to you. And so I think over the next year or two, you're going to see a very personalized experience, not just in the email market, but in the whole web experience. I know what you're a fan of and what you're not a fan of, and I know what your.

Habits are. I hate the New York teams.

Yeah, well.

The AI will know that immediately.

Don't send him Yankee stuff.

By the way, if you're a basketball guy, if you go to Finax and the first thing you see is Nicks versus who your favorite team is, that's a mistake on us and a miss on ours. Who did you grow up being a fan of? Celtics. Okay, so I hate Celtics. But if you had the disfortune, actually, you actually had the fortune, not the misfortune, but if you had the fortune growing up a Celtics fan, and I actually love Tate and I love Wicks. I'm a fan of- You.

Were a Part Sixer's own, right?

I'm not a fan of the Celtics. I'm a fan of Jason Tate, I'm a fan of Wick, I'm a fan of my friends who are involved with the organization. But if you grew up a Celtics fan, and I should know what types of memorabilia you would like, what types of training card you'd be interested in. I want to send you things that are very personalized to you. So I think the benefit to knowing so much about sports fans is we can really personalize the experience to them.

Does AI and the advancements in the last year, does that help you? Does it transform it?

What does it do? It's a big opportunity. I think any company like ours that's creating a lot of content has a massive opportunity from an AI perspective. I think in each of our business, probably Collectible is the business where we probably have the biggest opportunity, but we create a ton of content. We have two million... People don't realize in Finastra Commerce, the merchandise business, we carry more than two million different products today. Two million SKUs. That's insane. We have about a billion and a half dollars of cost of inventory that we carry to best satisfy fans. And think about that. With all of that, we're still not satisfying fans as well as we want to. So that shows our opportunity. But the future today, we bring a jersey in that we make and we bring it in by player. We make them one at a time here. The future is going to be you're going to have a robot. When someone orders a jersey, you can take that blank jersey, you're going to make that robot with automation. And by the way, that content is going to be created with AI. So there's so much opportunity for us to push it.

And I'm sure the AI will be able to tell you exactly what the habits of, Oh, this team is about to win the NLCS. Here's the window. This is 15 hours. You need to get these seven things ready to go right now. You probably have some of that already.

We do have a lot of that. But again, we're not even in the first inning of that. I think we haven't got to the national anthem of that.

You know what's cool? I was thinking about this watching the Black Friday game and they're putting the QR codes up, Amazon. I was like, You know what? This is just smart. I see what they're doing. It's a little manipulative, but I get it. And this is probably where sports is going over the next 20 years. They're going to have commercials. The QR code will come up right away. You're watching this right now. It's 15 % off. It feels like the.

Future, right? Yeah, I think that the not too distant future is you're watching a game and anything you do, you can click on that item to buy it. Whether it's on the field and it's the jersey, whether it's on the sideline and it's the sideline gear, you can buy it right off a player. I think you can make player props, bets right off of it. I think you can collect a collectible right from the show. You can trade it. I think you've got card prices going up and down based on player performance that you can action the show. You have marketplace from the broadcast. And that's why for us, when you think about where this company can go, it's such a baby company, think about where fanatics can go. The opportunity to create that fanatics app where you can do anything in one place, there's so much to do for digital sports fan, and that's really what our.

Opportunity is. I was thinking of you with the QR codes because at some point you have to be involved sports rights in some way because that would be the final piece of this, where I'm watching a game and you're able to offer me. I can bet on it as I'm watching it. I can buy the hat of one of the players in the sidelines because I like it. I can just do all these different things based on this experience I'm having on.

Your app. So two thoughts. One, I hope it's definitely never the final thing because it will never be a final thing for us because we'll always be pushing. That's number one. Number two, I think right now we're in three businesses where we have so much to do. So if you think about what we have to do in the commerce business, what we're already talking about, everything we're doing have to do in the collectibles business. And then the same goes in the online sports betting business and the eye-gaming business. We can't take on anything more today, but I think we're studying that business, we're watching it. We're seeing how things develop. And yes, it's a massive opportunity in the long term. Do we absolutely want to be able to have live sports where you can bet on the sports, buy the products, collect them, trade them, get tickets in our platform? Absolutely. Now, by the way, we don't need to do everything ourselves as well. We look at a company like a Live Nation Ticket Master that we could partner with to put tickets into our platform as well because they have such a breadth of assortment of tickets that fans want.

What we want to do is give the consumer what they want in one spot.

I just assume tickets was coming at some point.

Why wouldn't that? Yeah, I think tickets will come as a product that we offer to a consumer. I don't think we'll be the ticketing platform. I don't think that's a business that we should be in on our own. I think there's too many companies doing it, and I think we can more partner to get the product into our platform to satisfy our fans, not that we need to do it ourselves.

You have opinions on all the sports-right stuff that's happening, I'm sure. I definitely have some opinions- Do you watch this as a fan or a student or this is down the line? I might be involved, but I'm sure you're watching the NBA. What do they do? I know you're tight with basically all the different types of people in the NBA, but when you see the position they're in, what would you do if you were the NBA? How would you want people to see your games? Who would you want your partners to be?

Yeah. I'll say a couple of things that I don't want to comment on what the NBA or Adam Stratis should be. Let me say this. First, I'm absolutely a student to all this. It's nothing better to say, Hey, let me get some popcorn, be on the couch and just watch, because I've got so much to do and the three business that we're in, I don't want to take anything new on. But at the same time, I want to study. I want to learn. But it's all the things you like. Yeah. I love being a student of this. There's nothing more fun than watching how NFL is developing on Thursday, football, on Amazon and watching how Sunday ticket is developing with YouTube and Google and watching the process that the NBA is going through right now. Look, I think the NBA is in an incredible position because it's truly a global game. They have a very digital audience. So I think they've got an incredibly digital audience. And I think they've got not only all the traditional bidders that want to be missed with them, but they've got all the digital bidders that have all watched what's happened so far and been, I think, pleasant.

I think it's been good for.

Amazon, right? I think it's been a win-win. I think it's been great for everybody. Totally. Yeah. I look and say I think NFL is blowing past what they thought the viewership was going to be. I think Amazon is getting better results than what they thought. I think they're each doing a great job with it. I think it's been an incredible partnership. So hats off to Andy Jassy and the crew at Amazon and to Roger and roll up in the team with that- So.

You're not giving me a prediction?

Look, the prediction I would give you is the NFL a few years ago, did not have Sunday ticket with YouTube and did not have a partnership with Amazon, and those are doing great. And I think you're going to see that much or more in what the NBA does next. So I think the same way the NFL moved digital and has had a lot of success, I can't imagine the NBA does anything. I think they do that or more, not less. You're definitely going to see a shift in how these games... And the other thing is I think one thing that does need to happen when... The only thing that frustrates the shit out of me as a fan is it's so hard to find out even where to watch a game. It's too complicated. This needs to be simplified. I want to be able to go one place and be able to watch most of my sports. So that's obviously the dream we have for Fanatics long term. But we're not even thinking about that today. It's just a big, bold dream and then you figure out how to make it happen over many years.

The baseball playoffs were tough with that, where it's like as soon as it was time for a game, you had to do this basically roulette to see what channel itisn't just- The.

Sports are tough. It's actually just- -five partners. -sports are tough for that. It's hard to find where you want to watch games.

Tbs? Oh, we're on ESP tonight.

And by the way, I was part of a basketball team before and I can't figure out where to watch a basketball game sometimes, and where to watch a baseball game sometimes. I think that's an opportunity as well. If there's one thing that I didn't know enough in the beginning of my career that I really think now is you got to think about the fan first and everything you do, and then back into the business model from that. And that is something that we talk about religiously fanatics today. That's a different conversation than five years ago. You got to think about what's in the fan's best interest. And if you start there, I think you have a better business long term.

So you gave up your stake in the Sixers. I did. Is it true that being a minority owner just means that you have seasoned tickets?

No, definitely not. I mean, look, I was obviously, and you know this because you follow this business close. I was probably...

You're pretty hands-on for minority owner.

Yeah. And that wasn't by design, just what happened. Look, business is about relationships. I suck at a lot of things, but I generally have pretty good relationships. Seems like it. And so I think in the first five or six years, I wasn't that involved. And then as time went on, I got more involved. And look, my relationship with Josh Harris and Dave Blitzer was and is incredible. And I think we all do what we do best. But I was very involved in the last couple of years, and certain things went as planned and certain things didn't go as planned. I could tell you-.

What didn't go as planned?

We never won a championship. Do you have any guesses? Well, we never won a championship, and that sucks. When you own a basketball team, you own a sports team, you have one job, which is to win a championship. And each year that you don't win a championship, you failed. And you should look at the end of the season and say, We didn't achieve our goal if you didn't win a championship. And so to me, I was involved with it for 11 years. And we got passed in the second round of the playoffs too many times. And so we never achieved our goal. And that's something I look at as a personal failure because I was deeply involved with it.

You certainly owned an interesting team.

We did. That's the story of my life. I think I'm used to.

Having- You could just put in the Pistons where nothing happened year after year. Your team was like a soap opera.

Yeah, well, I mean, sports has a lot of that that follows it, and I feel like I have a lot that just follows me with that as well.

So yes. Were you trying to mediate the hard and thing at the end, or did you know this ship had sailed?

Look, it's no secret that I'm incredibly close still with Josh, Harris, and David Blitzer and the Six Star organization and Darryl and also with James. I thought there could have been a really good solution in it that didn't come to fruition. At the end of the day, I'm happy now that the Sixers are happy and doing great. And James is happy he got what he wanted. I'm more bullish than you are. I think the Clippers will be better than you just told me the Clippers were going to be. I'm the opposite of bullish. Yeah, you're very negative. I'm unbullish. Yeah, so I'm bullish, and I'm going to put that out there. Look, James, it's very easy.

Barish? What's the opposite of bullish? Barish.

Barish. Yeah, you're showing the.

Clipper short. I'm sold already. I have all the.

Shorts on it. Okay, perfect. Well, I'm more bullish than you are. I think it takes time. If there's one thing I learned that I didn't know in the beginning of the Sixers to get multiple stars to play well together and gel, that takes time. And something that I think James doesn't get enough credit for is the way he's adjusted his game to fit into the Sixers. And look, Joel is an incredible basketball player. He's great, not very good. And James came in there and figured out how to change his game to really support Joel and support the team. And I think that was working pretty well. What would be interesting is to watch... And by the way, to see the way Reece is stepping up now is a beautiful thing. And he could be one of the best humans on the planet. I mean, that guy, he's a born leader. He's always happy. He's always got a smile on his face.

He's going to make the All-Star team.

And by the way, no one deserves it more than he does. And he's working his ass off. But it's interesting. You got to get through a season without injuries or without season ending injuries and you got to get through. And shit goes wrong in any season in just about any team. It's very hard to keep a team healthy for the key guys, healthy for entire season. So to me, the measure of success for the Sixers is going to be how do we progress and not be bouncing the second round of the playoffs? And I'm rooting for great outcomes for both. I mean, for me-.

So you're out. You're never owning a team again.

I'm never owning a team again. I think fanatics is such a bigger opportunity. I'm fortunate to sit in the middle of sports, technology, the greatest athletes in the planet. I love what I get to do. I learned so much. I'm grateful for the opportunity I did it from 2011 to 2022, and I'm so happy to not be part of it anymore.

It doesn't sound that much fun. I mean, the ego part sounds great. You get sit, court, side. You get to potentially win the title. Those are the good things. And then the bad things are literally 90 things. The fact that players can become unhappy within six months and now your whole season is unabunded, or you have basically 29 and 30 chance of not winning the title year after year.

Here's the reality. It's not fun because if you think it's fun, you don't have the responsibility of every night going to bed and every morning waking up saying, How do I win a championship? And the stress and anxiety that goes along with that.

And all the fans who are just like, they're looking at you like they're saying.

But they're saying they're doing their jobs saying, Win a championship for me. God damn it. Right? And so I learned so much from it. I think it was actually helpful to me in the early parts of my career and from a development perspective. And by the time in the later part of it, it was so complicated with Finatics getting into the online sports betting business, with Finatics having direct deals with 3,000 athletes, which violates all the League rules. So it was definitely time for me to move on. I had, in addition to the stress of wanting to win a championship and not succeeding for the city of Philadelphia, then I had the stress I knew I was violating all these rules and what legal letter was coming each day from it. And so it was very clean. It was time for me to move on. Makes sense. And now I'm in the best position in the world because if there's a situation I care about, I can help behind the scenes. And so my relationship with... I joke around people all the time. People still like, if you were an NBA star, when I was the third largest owner of the Sixers in a very visible part of the organization.

People look to you a little bit sideways. Now, no one looks at you sideways anymore. Everyone just looks at you as neutral, which is the way I need to be as the leader of Finanx.

You occupy such a weird territory in the sports world because you could make the case you're the most powerful person in sports because you have the relationships literally with every League, every commissioner, all the famous stars. But you don't have a lot of the negative responsibility of that. It seems like your role is additive in all these different things. People call you, they ask for advice, or you're trying to help them from a business standpoint. There's nobody quite like you. But I always wondered, I wish there was a sports Czar that could basically be for the sake of just how sports would run, things that make sense that could just be like the sounding board for people. But we don't have that job. It doesn't exist. You're like the de facto sports are, even though you're not the Czar. Does that make sense?

First-.

You're a sounding for all these.

Different areas. Thank you for the kind words. I don't look at myself like that at all. The people that are the most important people in the sports organization are the athletes, these incredible, talented athletes that do what they do. We'd have no- But they'll ask you for advice though. One thing I'm very aware and humble about, without the thousands of credible athletes that do what they do, we'd have no business. We'd have nothing to do. We wouldn't have people to buy merchandise from us, to buy collectibles from us, to bet on sports with us. We'd have nothing to do. And without the sports organizations, the leagues, we'd have no business either. That said, I think where I'm finally in the right place in my life is I've got rid of conflict, and that's a great place to be.

But you're the only one. Everyone else has.

Some conflict. I think a lot of what I do is the behind the scenes stuff that we never talk about. I enjoy that. And I learned from that, and I grow from that. Look, I don't think there's a lot of people that have very good relationships with the commissioners and also very good relationships with the people who labor, okay? Because naturally there's tension between those organizations all the time. And I don't have much complexity anymore other than I'm waking up every morning, going to bed every night, focused on one thing, which is how do I better everything that we do financially? We have so much to be better at. But I think I look at it as an opportunity and something that I love doing that so many people come to me and say, Hey, what would you do here? Or what do you think about this? But I learned as much from each person. The way I work, and people don't really get this about me, people think I'm just being self-deprecated. I'm not. I legitimately barely made it out of high school. It's a miracle that I graduated. I went to college. I posted my 1.87 GPA that I had in the one semester.

I'm a literate... I can't read. Someone just said to me, Yes, you should read my book. And I said, Actually, without getting into who it was, I'm going to listen to it on audio. And I haven't even done that for... I haven't read a book since ninth grade. The way I learn is by getting great people around me and by they learn from me and I learn from them. So I'm always picking up different data points from people. So that's the way my brain works. Get a really differentiated group of people around you that all have different backgrounds and different things they can add, and try to help make their lives better and then learn from them. And that's a lot of how the ideas that we get at Finax come from. That's how a lot of my growth comes from. But I want to make sure I'm always giving more than I get in every time that I can.

Would you call yourself a problem solver?

I think it's one of my best skill sets because I'm street-smart. It's like, look, you obviously you can't be dyslexic, not be able to read a horrible student, and barely a man at high school didn't go to college, and then also you have to have some positive traits. My positive traits are relationship skills and common sense, and common sense solves problems. So yes, I think I'm generally a very good problem solver. I've also learned you can't solve everyone's problems and you can't fix everything. And that's something where I work on average 18 hours a day, seven days a week. People always see the fun, Michael Roby. They see the shit on Instagram. They see my white party, this Finax Super Bowl party. They see me with some people that are strategically important to me or some good friends of mine, they always think I live a fun life. What I love to do is get up, work my ass off, and then do it again the next day because that's the one thing I'm good at. I'm not a good at a terrible athlete. I'm a terrible student, but that's the one thing I like doing.

But you also learn at the same time, you can't fix everything. You can't solve everyone's problems.

The Vanity Fair wrote about the white party a couple of months ago, which you revived. P Diddy had it. It stopped in '09, and then there was like a Hamptons white party void. And then you stepped in. And now this is like the party. What's it? July third.

Every year? Well, it's your cheer changes. It depends on where the holiday falls. But you know it's funny. I had not even thought about that Diddy had done the party. Obviously, he had an amazing party, but it stopped in 2009. At that point, I was just working in my old company 24/7.

Nobody else did it for 10 years?

I don't think so. Look, I bought a house in the Hamptons in 2020, and I just decided to... I think I just picked up from one of my friends and.

Said, Hey, you- Because Warren Michaels used to have them in the 70s, right? Then you have a... There's like a tradition of- That's.

Before my day, but no later. I can tell you.

Look- It's a.

Great idea. -one of the things I love to do is bring people together. I actually really.

Enjoy that. From different pockets.

Of-that's exactly where I was going. I love bringing people from different backgrounds together because what happens, you all learn from each other. And whether it's a dinner that's got a bunch of athletes from different sports, a bunch of friends, some really successful business people and some collectors, and we're all learning from each other, whether it's... I remember the first time I introduced Robert Kraff and Meek Mill together, and we flew to Miami for something, and they're learning from each other. But these are always... I think what's a loss is if the really successful people in the relationship aren't always learning from everybody around them. So if you sat with Robert Kraft and you were on that flight the first time they introduced him to Meek Mill, and we were going to Miami, I remember just listening to how many questions Robert was asking Meek. And it's like, Meek got all these questions he wants to ask Robert, but this went on for two and a half hours. I barely said a word because I knew each of them so well. You were.

Just delighted.

I loved watching. It was just like a great conversation. Robert's learning about the culture and the background that Meek comes from. And Meek's asking Robert business questions. And it's like I love stuff like that. So we do a lot of that. The white party is really just a big manifestation of that in a lot of ways because you have so many different people from different backgrounds. You've got some of the best and most iconic business people in the world, some of the best investors in the world, and some of the most well-known athletes in the world. And then, by the way, people get to have fun as well. That's a fun thing.

What's the single best story that's happened at the party? Or that you can tell, I guess.

Great question. Single best story.

There have been one where you're like, I can't believe this. I feel like I'm on Mars.

Yeah. The whole event makes you feel that way, to be honest. When you see so many great people come throughout the world, I think just... For me, I feel really fortunate and lucky that so many people just want to come together and hang for 12 hours. It's actually a 13-hour party. It starts at 5:00 PM and goes till 6:00 AM in the morning. Oh, my God. And most people go the entire time of it. For me, I just like seeing the relationships get formed from the people that told me I met this person there. Funny story, just Mo'bama is now on The Sixers. He came the first year. He's now engaged the person he met at the White Party. I love that. It's amazing. But there's so many incredible stories. Probably none worse than when Camille fell off the stage and had to go to the hospital in the middle of the White Party. Oh, my God. But I knew she was going to be okay. She didn't know that. So I was trying to stay behind and make sure all my friends were having great time. I was told I need to immediately go with her, I would be.

In a lot of trouble. Yeah, that would have been bad for the relationship.

Yeah, it seemed that way.

You got Bob Kraft. The Pats might have a chance to have the worst record in the League here. This is not what he's about. This is the worst Patriots year since he's owned the team. I'm a giant Patriots fan. This is part of the process. We knew when Tom braided left, we knew. We were in first class of the airplane clabbing for 20 years, having a great time with Tom braided. And then eventually you get moved to the back of the plane. It's part of the process. But he's probably not handling this well, I'm guessing.

Look, here's what I'll tell you. To do what they did, Robert need to be the glue in a lot of places. And I watched that firsthand. Okay, and I can tell you the person I learned the most from in sports ownership was absolutely Robert. It's not the stuff that people see, it's what happens behind the scenes. It's how you keep shit together. It's when people want to kill each other and they actually don't kill each other. You stop bad stuff from happening. And so for me, I've always been a big student. I study lots of tricks that Robert has, and I watched lots of things. I can tell you he's a perennial winner. Yes, this has been a horrible season. He will be a perennial winner. Yes, Tom braided, greatest quarterback, greatest NFL player of all time. To me, there's no debate about that. But I think if you ask Tommy, he would say he alone that Robert was glued and helped keep everything to where they were able to win six championships together. Six Super Bulls. I got to get my vernacular right.

If it's an absentee owner, do braided and Belichick make it until through 2019?

No.

When do you think they break up?

I don't want to get myself in trouble, but far before 2019.

It is amazing. But now it's like the big controversy in New England is, well, braided won the Super Bulls. To me, it was both of them. I give them equal billing in the six Super Bulls.

How about this? I give the three of them. And look, you're going to say the person who had the most responsibility is Tom Braden. I've got to tell you something. I'm fortunate enough to really have got to know Tom really well in the last few years. I have never seen someone who when you spend a ton of time with them, you see why they've got the outcomes that they've got. He is truly extraordinary. I've seen other athletes that have won a lot of championships. I think they've maybe been more athletically talented than Tom was. Tom did it from an absolute will to win. And I'm not going to fucking give up. And I'm going to win that game. And just watching him and his work ethic is truly extraordinary. And I will tell you, I don't think there's another person from a people who've played sports, he could be the person who motivates me the most. I hear from him the earliest in the morning, okay? There's generally a text before 6:00 AM for one of the two of us. But he's always working and pushing and whatever he's doing. You realize why he's got that outcome.

But that said, he alone would not have done that. I do think that in addition to Bill that Robert really added... There's so many things that I know that he did that people would never understand to get the outcomes they got.

Well, I hope that the next quarterback is somebody who's super competitive and a freaking maniac. Because I'm convinced that's like 90 % of it. For somebody to be great at that level, at that position, it can't just be about the talent. There's these extra pieces that come with it, and you can tell when somebody doesn't have it. And you can tell by the way people talk about them and their teammates and their coaches.

Look, the best confirmation of what you just said is what happened when Tom braided went to Tampa. I mean, this guy went to Tampa. That was a very weird situation. And he wins a Super Bowl.

The first year he's there. With playing with a bunch of guys who were 20 years older then who had nothing in common with.

Yeah. And you watched that leadership come through from him. And that's the thing again. We do a company meeting once a quarter where we bring our 18,000 employees together, and we bring a guest in front of 18,000 employees every quarter. My first guest was Tom braided. And I think when Tom came on, people would say like, Hey, you're just trying to showcase, hey, we have a great relationship with Tom braided. No, what I wanted to do was ask Tom, Okay, how do you deal with high pressure situations? Could you learn from someone better than Tom braided and how to deal with high pressure situations? You know, what are the things you do to lead and get better results from getting people work together? What do you do when people aren't working well together? His answers were spectacular. I asked him for an hour all these different questions about leadership, management style, work ethic. And so many people were side texting me and email me saying that was spectacular listening to him. And that's again why he got the outcome.

Did you ever hear him talk about playing in the Super Bowl? How it took him five or six times to realize that the half time was longer and it was screwing up his mental, whatever. And so then when he went to the last couple of Super Bowels, he figured out how to crest his energy after the half time because he was too hyped for the first half, but then it would dip and then he couldn't get it back. So he put all this weird mental energy into like, All right, here's what I have to do, and I have to be super calm and then do this. And then third quarter, I crest.

I did it. But who else would think like that? But I just heard him tell the story last week about what the different things he went through in his brain when they were down 28-3 against Atlanta and just listening to- He just did the math. -and just listening to how he first didn't want to be embarrassed. And then he realized, Okay, we can win this game. Let's go and just- We're down on 19.

Six plus two, six plus two, three, we're there.

Correct. And just how he knew he was going to win that game is just an incredible story.

Since the last time we talked, which was almost two years ago and you were just getting into collectibles back then, something I've cared about my whole life. But now you're deep in and it seems like you have the bug. We're at your house, couldn't help but notice, get some uncuts up. You have some proudly display cards, but do you have the bug? Are you in?

I absolutely have the bug. I was as a kid, trading cards was my first... Remember, terrible student, terrible athlete. I was the last person being picked on every team. I couldn't do well in school, so business was the only thing I was good at. But the business I love the most as a kid was buying and selling trading cards to my friend's parents. That was the business. They had the money. I found the customer with the money. I bought and sold cards like crazy as a kid. I didn't get back into this until three years ago. I can tell you I've never had so much fun. I mean, this is an incredible industry. Collectors are the best fans in the world. There's nothing I love more than going to collectible shows, talking to... Because these are the best fans in the world. You talk about someone, you're a collector. You're definitely buying a lot of sports merchandise. You're investing in cards, memorabilia.

I might have gambled a couple of times.

This is the fanatics... These are the fanatics most important customers. I'm your.

Wheelhouse.

Customer. Yeah, for sure. Absolutely.

But you must have looked... You saw what everybody who was in the collector thing. I was at ESP and I see the photo essays from the convention. And part of the comedy of it was just, it was added in 1973. You really felt like you were in a time machine. There was no woman to be seen. It was the most depressing place in the planet. And yet there's tens of millions of dollars of product in here and some of the best stuff and all these people who they've been waiting the whole year to go. And it's like, why isn't this cooler? What are we doing wrong? Why isn't this better?

I've never seen an industry with more passionate collectors that have been so underserved than this business. And to me, that just creates so much opportunity. And we've done... Look, we've onlywe came up with this idea only three years ago. We only bought tops. January first of 2022 is not even two years that we've owned tops. And we've done so much so far, we haven't even got started yet.

So you buy tops, everybody goes nuts. Then Panini is involved. Now, there's been some battles with Panini. How does that all work out? It's different sports. Is that an obstacle or is that something that eventually works itself out?

Yeah. For me, we're just focused on doing what's in the best interest to the collector. So for us, let me tell you what we saw when we looked at the business, we saw a business where you had sports properties and players given the rights to tops, Penini, Upperdeck, these companies were all selling cards to distributors who then picked where the cards go. And they weren't selling the hobby shops. They weren't serving the breakers. They weren't serving the retailers directly. It made no sense. Would Nike ever sell to a distributor to sell to a foot locker or to sell to a.

Foot action? Well, they were middlemen who used to just market up.

Right. And so they were taking money away from the collector and the hobby shop. So the first thing we saw that we said, This makes no sense. We need to collapse that and service the hobby shops directly. The breakersus directly. The retail is directly. I think when we bought Tops, they serve 300 hobby shops. I think today we service 800 hobby shops or something.

Like that. So they're all happy that you did this.

Elated. Yeah, they want to get product directly from us because they need that direct relationship so they can get the allocation. But they need to build their business to best support their collectors. And we rather give them the margin. If you'd say there was a big incremental margin to split, most of that margin went to the hobby shops, to the breakers, to the collectors, to the industry. It didn't sit with us. We passed it on. So that was.

Very obvious. The players were getting short-changed, too.

Now they're making a lot more money because we're paying them on a much higher sales. The second thing, and this was crazy, I didn't know what a redemption was. Now you're going to laugh at me. And if you're not a collector, people are going to bore people here. But everyone kept saying to me, Michael, you need to get rid of redemptions. So it took me a couple of weeks to figure out what a redemption, which is basically an IOU. I bought a case of cards, a pack of cards, and in that card came your-.

Joel and Bid.

You two- That was to say, Zion card, and it's an I-O-U for it because they didn't have the card signed by them. And there were so many redemptions out there that collectors were maddened by this. So I went to baseball, which is our biggest business today. I went to the head of the Union, Tony Clark. I went to organization and said, We need to eliminate redemptions. And they're like, Okay, explain to me how this works. What do you need to do? You need to have a much better relationship with athletes. To give you an example, when we launched Chrome, this is a rough number, but a year ago we probably had 30,000 redemptions, and that means 30,000 IOUs. This year we had less than a thousand. We reduced it by 97 %. That means when you buy cards, you're not chasing us for cards. Okay?

Didn't you see my part of the motto is they were hoping that people wouldn't chase for the card and then they just got to.

Keep the card? I can't speak to what other people do. What I can tell you is we want to delight our customer. Last thing we want to do is a customer chasing us for card. And by the way, if we need to get them a card, we want to get it to them very quickly. So we've reduced our redemptions top since we bought. The business is much bigger than it's called, twice the size, and the absolute amount of redemptions is down by 75, 80 %, and all the new releases, it's down by 95 %. So I was just like focusing on our relationship with the athletes to get cards signed more quickly, making it a better experience for the athletes because you're worried about the collector.

That's where your relationships help.

It's where fanatics relationships help. And by the way, we're focused on it because we care so much about the collector. The next thing was like product innovation. There had been no material product innovation. I remember this is.

Actually- It was basically just the Chrome cards. And that was what, in the late 2000s?

Yeah. Well, I'll just give you an example of how entrepreneurial we were. Mike Mayhem, who's the CEO of our collectibles business, he called me last December, said, Hey, I've got a great idea. Every time a baseball player takes the field for the first time, I want to put a debut patch for one game on their jersey. When they get off of the field, I want to take that debut patch off and put it into a one-on-one card. I said, Wow, it's an amazing idea. So what are we doing it? He said, Well, I spoke to the tops organization. They told me it will never, ever happen. There's no possibility. What do you even wasting your time? Wait, you're going to try to put a patch on the uniform. Of every.

Rookie that ever played?

Of every rookie? You think that the league is going to be okay with that? The player is going to be okay with that? He said, But it makes complete sense. So I called Rob Manford. I called Tony Clark that minute. I called Tony and said, Tony, I got a great idea. I said, I want to put a debut patch on the jersey for the first time a player plays their Major League game. He said, That sounds like an amazing idea. You make the jerseys, go do it. Then I called Rob. Rob said the same thing. We launched that four months later. Wow. These are the most valuable cards today. Each year, three to four hundred people debut in Major League Baseball. They played their first game. And think about if you.

Got- So it's almost like the jump man.

Card that is the debut. Could you imagine if you had Ohtani's debut? If you had the only one in the world. If he had a patch from his first game, that patch was in a card, you had that card, okay? That card is worth.

Millions or tens of millions of thousands. That makes way more sense to me than when they would just grab like, It's a piece of their cheater's jersey on ard. What is that? And by the way, a lot of times they say.

They're game warm because the guy put the jersey on his body for one minute in the parking. We're stopping all that stuff. Look, by the way, do we still screw things up every day? Yes, because we've only owned Tops for less than two years. And then we bought... There were so many problems just in the manufacturing. So we bought the biggest printer of trading cards because there were so many problems you were having misprinting of cards, delays. You should launch trading cards like you launch a video game launch or shoe launch. Okay, so Nike says this Travis Scott shoe or this Jordan is launching on this day, and that's an event. When we launch cards today, we have a giant launch coming up on 12/12 with Boehmann Chrome. And what's going to be braided Day for us is going to be insane. You'll see all this. You're going to actually text me on 12/12 and say, Wow, that was awesome. Because we our launch and we turn them into events.

Well, the basketball has been the opposite, where it's like, It's coming out soon, and you never know. And it's like, Can I just get a Zion rookie box? Can you just tell me when that's.

Coming out? Here's what I would say. If Nike did the same thing every year and they just had Evergreen business, the business would fade, okay? But they keep innovating. So what we need to do is have great product breakthroughs. I'll give you another example. In a base card, like in baseball and the base card, there are many base cards of a player, okay? So our CEO and the team come up with something called the MVP buyback program where the cards you should trade for 50 cents or a dollar for these cards. And we said, Hey, we're going to buy them back. We're going to give the hobby shops a credit of $20 for every MVP each year. So Akuna, Ohtani, we're going to give... Last year, Paul Goldschman, we're going to give a $20 credit through the store. So now you're driving all these people into the stores who are returning tens of millions of dollars at retail of these cards to get store credits. And what do they do? They buy that much more cards. It wasn't that complicated for our team to come up with that, but it's been like if you ask a hobby shop, they'd say it's driving demand like crazy.

And then just marketing. We are marketing collectibles and trading carts for the first time. And so I think overall this was a sleepy industry with no innovation. We're coming and we're going to innovate products like crazy. We're going to innovate marketing. We're going to fix the consumer experience, and then we're going to worry about the collector and the hobby shops and the breakers. And so for a business that we came up with an idea three years ago, we had our first dollar of revenue less than two years ago. We're making great progress. By the way, there's lots of things to still fix. We bought this really big company that makes and packages a lot of cards. We have to keep pushing quality and say the quality needs to be made. I told you a little bit ago, we're going to put a chip and all high-end cards going forward with a unique identifier so you can't counterfeit a card, so you can't steal cards. There are so many things we can do to improve this.

So the counterfeiting is the biggest issue, which has been the biggest issue for 30 years.

It's not the biggest issue, but it's a big... Look, if you can't invest in something and know that it's authentic, then why am I an investor? So take that example. We created this debut patch. Let's say we did that when Ohtani or Aaron Judge had their rookie years and you had that debut. Well, that card is going to be worth millions of dollars, so we better put a unique identifier in that card to make sure that no one can come up with a counterfeit version of that card. So we're very focused on doing what's in the collector's best interest. It'll take time, but we are... I mean, we've doubled the team at top since we bought the company. We've invested so many times the capital in the manufacturing. We just moved into a brand new facility to really fix quality, fix timeliness, eliminate theft, eliminate counterfeiting issues. And we're a lot better than we were, but you wake up certain days, you wake up certain days, you're like, I can't fucking believe this just happened. Like, shit goes wrong because you've got new companies that you're working to perfect and get right.

I told you how I was on the top sport for a couple of years, and I was always surprised. The goal, it seemed like of the entire card industry was just people like this stuff, just keep serving the burgers and fries. Don't get crazy. Just keep going out. Let's try to turn a profit. Let's not... Let's not think outside the box at all. And that was the case in the '80s, the '90s, the 2000s, protect your lead. And now you're basically throwing a chainsaw in the whirlpool here. But has the response been... Have you felt like a little, Whoa, this is too much. You guys are acting too crazy or you feel like everyone's welcomed the innovation?

Neither. So I'd say it's been overwhelmingly positive, but there's still negativity. First of all, I look at a collector like the ultimate sports fan. They care about their hobby, and it is their hobby the same way for sports team, it's their team. They care about this more than anything in the world.

You almost can't win.

With them.

You can only lose.

I think you can win, but they have very high expectations, which they deserve to have they're investing in this hobby. I think people give you a lot. We're getting so much credit for the debut patches that we did and how much people love these cards. And people love Finax Live, the live commerce platform that we launched. People love the marketing that we're doing. And hobby shop told us the MVP buyback program is the best thing that anyone's ever had in the hobby. People love the marketing we're doing. But then when you screw up, they tell you as well. But guess what? Great. That makes us better. So what would I say? If you walk to the national with me, you would see thousands of people showing appreciation for what we've done. But when we screw something up and we still make mistakes, people tell you and they have the right to tell us.

Yeah, one of the things now, and it's not with you guys necessarily, but just like these box breaks, it's a whole thing now about did they fake that one? Or how did that person end up with the card in this box?

Here's what I'm going to tell you.

How do you fix that? Let me give.

You a great example. So let me give you a great example. First of all, breaking is a big part of the collectibles industry. If a.

Collector doesn't- It's a big part of Fanatics Life.

Correct. And if a collector doesn't like that, then they're just not being realistic because you'd say there are three distribution points for primary cards: breakers, hobby shops, and retail is like a Walmart or a Target. And before it was hobby shops and the retailers, it wasn't the breakers. The breakers now have an important... And by the way, it's great marketing. So for us, we understand the math that if you take a big breaker and one guy is doing 15 % of the business, they're going to get 15 % of the cards. So what we did, people always question the integrity of what we do. So this year, for the first time, we said, Hey, let's take our auditor. I think we hired Deloitte and Touche. It wasn't Deloitte and Touche. One of the auditors, we're going to hire you. I think it is De Leuitte and Touche. We're going to hire you. We're going to pay you to audit all the results the same way the NBA auditors their draft lottery. That's cool. And we did that this year. Now we haven't really broadcasted, but we started doing that this past year. We now have De Leuitte and Touche coming in, auditing everything to make sure that everything is random as it's advertised.

So that was a great thing for us to do. We just added the cost for the authenticity of the hobby. Does everyone know we did that? No. Did we make a big deal out of it? No. But it's important to do things like that? Absolutely. I always say, anytime someone has a right, we should listen to it, figure out whether they're right or wrong. If they're right, we should act on it. If they're wrong, we should still hear their perspective.

So what do you collect other than James Harden Cards?

Well, you only saw some of the new displays that we're working on. So you saw my 86 Jordan downstairs in the basement. And for me, I like to collect things with my friends. So a big, braided collector. Obviously, Joel. I'm not friends with Jordan, but you can't be a collector not having 86, 10 Jordan card. And for me, what I want to actually collect, honestly, are the really interesting things that we're making for the first time. So we have some braided cards coming on 1212 that are going to be spectacular. And we have some of the innovations that are coming next year, just things that I'm like, I need to own this because they're so cool. Because it's more like to me, look, I've got into art in the last couple of years. For the first time in my life, I feel like these are things that make me want to say I want to own this instead of art because I can display it the right way. It's a piece of history. And that's what I think is so great about Collectibles.

Do you have a 2,000, Bradie, yet?

I do.

Just a couple of good rookie cards that, of course, I didn't get in the moment. Before we go, we're going to talk about gambling quick because you got into that too. Would have been your thoughts as you dive into the business? What surprised you?

I haven't been surprised to date, if I'm being blunt. I think it's a really big industry. I think there's some really good companies, and there's certainly FanDuel, DraftKings are really what they do, a lot of respect to MGM, the different competitors in the space. What I tell you is I think we do have some real competitive advantages. First, our offering to the fan is more rewarding. We give on every bet place we give one % a straight bet, up to five % depending on the type of bet back of the gross bet back to, and fan cash that you can then go place other bets, buy merchandise, buy trading cards. So we have the most rewarding offering of anyone out there. Because if you say the rest of that the economics is the same, but on every bet you make, you get fan cash, which is essentially cashback to either bet more or buy other things from the finance ecosystem. I think that's incredible. Look, I knew this was going to be really hard. People saying to me like, Michael, fan don't have 80 % of the market. Do you really think you have a chance?

I'm like, I can read. I'm fully aware of it. Yeah, look, we have more than 100 million customers. We talk to those customers a fair amount of time. We have a lot of relationships in this business, and we're in it for the long term. We want to be a real player in this long term. By the spring of this coming year, we'll be in every state that Fandone is in from an online sports betting perspective. We'll be in every state from an iGaming perspective. So we're going to have a full... The Fanatics sportsbook will be out there in the middle of doing transitions now because we bought Point, but we're transitioning that over the Fanatics brand. So she's going to take us a little bit of time. I have no patience. That's not a strength of mine. But if I'd say, what have I learned? You just have to be a little bit patient, even though I'm not.

Well, as you know, I have a giant fan doll tattoo on my back.

But there's room for more than a fan doll. I thought you screwed that up and you were trying to have a fanatics tattoo and you just somehow ended up with it wrong. You started with the right first letter, but then somehow it got screwed up after that. Did you- You had the first two letters right.

Were you surprised? First three. Were you surprised that the sports have embraced gambling like this? No. Even when you see it on.

The NBA, the studio shows.

All of that stuff? Not the.

Slides, because every conversation I was having five years early with everybody who mattered was already embracing it. Everyone knew it was coming. Got to give Adam Silver tremendous credit for going out and being so open about why it made sense to embrace it. But it was the most logical thing on the planet. So it was obvious it was coming. It wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when.

Everyone knew it was coming, but ESPN.

I'll let you say that.

I had to. I was sitting there. It was a funny joke.

It was.

Relatively funny. All right. So you have gambling, collectibles, merchandise. Is there anything coming that you can't hint at yet?

No. There's going to be three-years for now. What's coming right now is deep focus on being great in each of those businesses. And we have a lot of work to do in each of those businesses. And then over time, when we're ready, when the businesses are more mature, and we feel like right now we have so much to do, we haven't even launched the right shed. If you look in the collectibles business, today we have baseball, F1, Bundes League, UEFA, Live, U-of-C launches. Next year, we still have to launch W-W-E. We have to launch NBA. We have to launch NFL. So we need to get all those properties moved over. We need to do a great job. We need to talk all the product innovations that we've done in baseball. Remember, baseball, when we bought Tops, was the number three player. It's now number one by far and away. Nba and NFL have dropped quite a lot, and baseball has grown tremendously because of the product innovations, the market innovations, the distribution innovations, the consumer focus, the elimination of such a high % of redemption. So we need to do that same thing in the new sports that we're taking on.

So we have so much to do in the three business room. We're not doing new for a long time.

What do you gamble on? Because you're you're prone to a 6:00 AM Vegas.

Game, especially.

Are you Blackjack?

Yeah, I've been gambling on sports since 2009. No, but.

You're.

Like a cards guy. I like Blackjack and Baccarat. Baccarat because of how.

Fast it is. What do you like? James Bond?

Yeah, it's just so fast. You get maximum amount of action in the least amount of minutes. And if you ultimately want to get back to work and just do it for a quick change in mental stress levels for something else, I like Baccarat because it's the fastest game.

But all that the NBA players are mostly Blackjack, right?

Yeah. Yes, there's a lot of Blackjack.

Do you have a seat? Are you like a third base guy? Are you middle of the table? Where are you?

I think that's an individual sport. Gambling is an individual sport. So when I'm playing Blackjack, I generally like to play on my own.

So nobody at.

The table. Look, I'll just play differently, more conservatively. I'm going with a big.

Group of people. So you're one of those guys.

You want everyone to do whatever they want and don't ever tell someone what to do. But if you're really going for a lot of action, then you want to control your destiny versus others. So when I'm with my friends gambling, I'll probably gamble a little bit differently and then someone puts too many drinks in me, I might not care and just go all in no matter what.

So you, James Harden, you're at a table playing blackjack. You're just playing for fun and you're trying to win crazy amounts of money. Are you giving them tips? What's happening? Are there drinks? What's that looking like at 4:00 in.

The morning? You would need to give James no tips. He knows how to play blackjack well, for better or worse. You would hear a lot of screaming, go to your home. That's what James loves to scream. Go to your home for the deal at a break. You see a lot of pounding the table. We did a for charity for the criminal justice organization that myself and Robert Kraft and Jay Z, and Meatball started. We did a casino night September 30th in the Atlantic City. And that was fun because a lot of us got to gamble together, and that was fun. But I moderate my gambling based on the situation. I'm a situational gambler. I'm a situational gambler.

Baccarat.

It's.

Fast, baby. It's fast. It's fast. I've never made that leap. I'm just like pure Blackjack. I can play blackjack for 11 straight hours.

I love Blackjack. When I was younger, I had a big win once. I had played for 36 hours straight.

Never went to sleep. Just P trips, that's it. No food. Was there food at the table? No, there.

Were food at the table, of course.

Oh, my God. And no poker for you?

Never played once in my life.

I had a phase, but it's just not social enough for me. It's too sad. It just feels like everybody just.

Feels like-There's nothing more fun than gambling with your friends so long as everyone's in control. When you start out the night and everyone's gambling together, and there's nothing more fun than when the tables went together. But no crafts for you. I don't even know how to play crops. I've logged a few hours of Blockchack in my life and recently flew a few hours of Bach.

Okay, Bach. Now you're abbreviating it. Yeah. Interesting. All right, Michael Rubin, good to see you.

Great hanging.

All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Michael Rubin, thanks to Just Determinate. Thanks to Steve and Jonathan Kirmaw for producing today. I will see you on this feed on Thursday. Must be 21-plus and present in select states. Fando is offering online sports wager in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800, gambler, or visit fando. Com/rg in Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. You can call 1-800 next step or text next step to 5-33-42 in Arizona. Call 1-88-7-89-777 or visit ccpg. Org/chat in Connecticut. 1-800, 9 with it in Indiana. 1-800, 5-2-2, 4-7-00 or visit Ksgamblinghelp. Com in Kansas. 1-8-7-7-7-7-0 stop in Louisiana. Mdgamblinghelp. Org in Maryland.

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