1-on-1 with DP – 93.7 The Ticket KNTK - David Turcotte (Canada National BBall/Colorado St.) - March 25th, 2024

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

David Turcotte (Canada National BBall/Colorado St.) - March 25th, 2024Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

It's time to go one-on-one with D.P. Coming at you live from the couple Chevrolet GMC Studios. Here is your host, Derek Pearson. Brought you by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul. On 937 the ticket and the ticket FM.com. Oh, baby on a Monday. I hope you are well, and I hope that you are having the kind of day you hope for when you woke up this morning. And if you haven't had it, you got six hours to.

had to make it better. That's what we're trying to do. 402, 464, 56685 is the start of him and text line if you want to be a part of what we're doing. You can hit us up on the text line. Hit me with a, what's up. You know the deal. You know the deal. Hit me with a what's up.

Don't just yell at me in a car passing by. Don't put me off from a distance. Just say, yo, what's up? And we'll add you into the conversation. And this is a good Monday. Again, you can follow on the video streams, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, which X and Allo Channel 961, Nebraska Cable,

so you can see the handsome bearded face of our guest tonight. Who's on the show? Yeah. Let's welcome Dave Turcott to 101. Turk, what's happening, brother? Hey, it's a great day. I am having a great day today, so I've already a good start, but I'm just lucky to be here.

Thanks for having me on. There's so much to this thing, and I got so many questions. sent to me after last week's episode and the conversations with you because you landed on several things that were of such intrigue to just sports faiths, right? The people that are curious about how this thing works. And then in the time of March Madness, you get to help give some clarity from behind the scenes on how the stuff breaks down in basketball in full. So your first take on March Madness so far, I know that you are a conservative.

of basketball in full. So, Turk, what's the first thing that jumps out to you? If I say March Madden is this year's version, what jumps out? Awesome chaos. Yeah. I mean, I can tell you right now, nobody in the world picked Oakland. That destroyed everybody's bracket. Nobody in the world picked, I don't think, Duquesne to beat BYU.

That killed a whole other bunch of brackets. I mean, I love that ESPN reported literally on day two. There are zero perfect brackets left in the nation. Like literally instantly destroyed. And I think that was great. You know, there's always a consensus that, you know, there, you know, people always believe that there's regional television media bias on who gets and who gets does. And I mean, generally there is some of that, but I think that's more in the meat in the middle.

The very best teams, you know, are pretty typically the very best teams. And, you know, the very worst teams are typically those. Like if you're arguing about, you know, between, you know, being the 70th best and the 64th best, well, okay, but still, you know, it's a great honor and a privilege to be in the NCAA tournaments, you know, but I would tell you that that's on the men's side. But if you say NCAA March Madlis in general, I'd say the biggest story is the women's game. I mean, you know, I look at this whole thing and I love, like I was just watching before the show. I was just watching, I think it was Syracuse, Yukon were playing, great plays being made. Like, and I'm telling you right now,

these are stadiums that are full. There are people that are watching women's basketball. So I think as great as the men's thing is, and there's all the great stories, this year, more than any other year that I've ever been following basketball, the women's game is front and center, getting almost as many eyeballs as the men games.

I'm seeing total parity there. But I'm seeing a game on the rise, though. Like I think, you know, there really is more growth in attention and media novelty and all kinds of things on the great women playing the game. a lot of the great personalities that are going to create great rivalries in the WNBA, right? And, you know, so there's a lot of fun things happening.

But I would say, you know, it is an awesome chaos would be generally. But that couched in, wow, the women's game is really coming and it's awesome to see them having their day. Turk, through all of this, right, from an athletic family and a lot of breadcrumbs left in place for you to know what success is and what it looks like. I'll ask you to give folks your elevated pitch, your scouting report on yourself. So you as a high school player, you at Colorado State, and then you as an Olympian, give the scouting report. Who was David Turkard on the basketball court? You know, it's interesting.

The role on all three of those teams or all three of those levels were totally different, you know, and they morphed into because you had to fit into different programs in different times. And I was actually talking to someone about this, about how, you know, every team has to have a certain chemistry and guys work together in different ways. So in high school, I was the guy that, you know, in fact, I had a high school coach, you know, my, my arrival high school walks into the gym where I'm practicing and I'm just shooting by myself and the coach walks in as a joke. And he was a friend, of course, small town. He goes, oh, looks like your team's having an offensive practice today. Like it's all being by myself. So I was probably 70% of my team's offense back in

high school. So I was a guy that would have been, let's just say that, I would have been, I would have been a lot more athletic than you would have thought. I would have been a shooter that would like, like really shooting and scoring was my thing. And my favorite players, by the way, growing up, let's go old school. I love Norm Nixon. I loved Andrew Tony. You know, Vinnie Johnson loved Vinnie Johnson, you know, and I emulated a lot of those guys and, you know, like guys that were, you know, quick, one dribble, two dribble stop and pop guys, but strong defenders. But my big thing was is because I was a better athlete, I was always a good defender, always super aggressive and really intense. Like if it was going to go down, it was going to go down. We were going to go,

blood, sweat and tears all the way to the end, 44 minutes of hell, whatever it is, right? It was going to happen. So as a player, high school that way, college was different because I had, And unfortunately, through high school and college and even beyond, I always had multiple coaches and interruptions in the game. So from my early years in college, it was, you know, I was a shooting guard playing with some, but I was kind of the new novelty. I was on the all freshman team in the conference and all that. And then as I was doing a lot more scoring. By the time I got to my senior year, we had issues on our team where, hey, you know what? You got to kind of slow.

We're going to slow things down to scoring 80 points a game to scoring 53 points a game. and we're going to lead the nation in defense, which we did at Colorado State, where I played college ball. So my game had to shift to meet the expectations of a coach. And, you know, in college, which, who I love dearly, we won 23 games, you know, we did really well. Went to the NCAAs the year after that. And so it was a lot of changing depending on the, you know, sort of the demographic constituents of my coaches and my teammates would be to do there. But after, you know, after college, it was, you know, all bets are off. and now you're playing, you know, to get international eyeballs on you.

And so for me on the Olympic team in particular, the one thing that kept me on the team so long were two things, I should say, I could guard anyone like one through three. So I could guard because I was, you know, I was, I'm only six three, but with not a lot of body fat, I'm 224 pounds. So I'm really able to get in there. And I was guarding guys like Oscar Schmidt, you know, like, you know, the guys, you know, of course Michael Jordan, but guys like Oscar Schmidt, that stretch three, almost four, six, eight, six, nine shooting deep. But I could get in there and was strong enough to push guys around and get them off their spots and make their lives miserable, right? So that was really what my job was to get shooters and scores and make them uncomfortable.

So I was always guarding and I was a primary defender where, okay, who's the best player on the other team? That's who I'm guarding, unless he's a five, basically, was my role. So that was the number one thing that prolonged my career after college. add to that, at least in FIBA, I mean, I was stroking it pretty good over 50% from the three point line. So I mean, so if you can defend like a beast and then get in there and be able to knock down shots and then let your stars go, like, you know, guys like Steve Nash and other guys that I played with that, guys like that, the game just flows and you want to get out of the way and be like, all right, here's where I got to be. I know where my spots are to make it work on this team. Because at an Olympic or a pro team, everyone, there's lots of scores, right? So it's now it's like how do we work together?

And so I didn't sit there and argue about I got to be the number one guy. I got to be the first choice. I got to be the first option. I hooked in by saying I'm going to be the best defender on our team. And I'm going to be the guy that makes that guy scoring 30 a game. He's going to get 18. And that worked for everybody except Michael Jordan because that didn't work at all. Turk, here's the thing.

There's so much. And this is why I wanted to share you with sports fans here because there's so much behind the curtain. stuff that goes on and your intellect and breaking you down is a little different than what is being fed. I'll ask you this thing because you just said that defense, in spite of all things, defense was the thing that was going to keep you in the game and made you important. Why is that message so lost on the next generation of players? Why do we have to define to people, listen, everybody can score. Defenders get to play. You know, I'll tell you something.

One of my favorite players of all time, and I guarantee you is one of yours, too, Jamal Crawford. Yep. Just said it best on ESPN. AAU teams getting, you know, like my kids in the 10th grade and help me get them into Stanford. You know, like there's this crazy hyper-competitive cottage industry built, and it starts before high school, as you know, like these are AAU teams running for 10, 11, 12-year-olds, and they're talking about their kid going to college, D1, playing

professionally. I'm like, are you out of your freaking mind? Your basketball player at 11 should be thinking about his next soccer practice or maybe his next chess club or some other stuff that helps them grow in lots of ways outside of the basketball court. So, Jamal Crawford, I think, touched on what a lot of my friends. Now, you remember my friend Brian Sitter, who runs Vegas Elite, same thing. It's a hard balance to say, we want kids getting chance to play games, but kids got to go

to the woodshed, too. You've got to have hours a day where it's just, okay, I'm working on one drill, one thing. And so I think the reason that a lot of that message is lost is because they're getting into high school saying they're doing the map. Here's the top 100 players on the 100 ESPN. How many of those are like, well, this guy's awesome. He gets 13 rebounds and he keeps the opposing player to 60% less than his scoring average. Said no one ever. It's all, how many points a game do you get?

How many assists a game do you get? That's all the stats anybody cares about. you know and so unfortunately that's kind of a toxicity that if you look at every coach in the world they're they're going to say like think about if you're a college coach what would you do to have a guy like dennis rodman on your team that is just an absolute monster defender and will get you 50% of every rebound that ever falls down but the problem is is that the industry and the money around sports skews things in an artificial way that's not true to the game like like last time we talked right the NBA rules. Why are the NBA defensive rules the way they are? Why isn't it like FIBA or international

basketball where got anybody, play zone, play man, do double and triple teams, do whatever he want? Who cares? Why do we need rules around defense? It's because it's better for television. It's better for entertainment to make the game. So there's a huge push. Now, is anyone complaining about players getting millions of dollars and the value of TV revenue, the value of media? And you're a member of the media, which is a great voice in the media. All of these things are driven by sponsors and getting more eyeballs. That's just a reality. But if you look at every great team that's ever prospered and won over time, I can't think of one where you would say, you know, really, really good offense, but terrible defense and they won championships anyway, right? Like everyone knows that defense

wins championships. So it's kind of like you got to get, you know, to get your star power and get your offensive players in. That's always issue one, how are we going to score, how we're going to great offense. But that's about great entertainment. We want to start talking winning. You got to bring in your guys that can defend. And so that's where I was about, which was like, look, every year on a pro team, on our Olympic team, every single year, I heard about the next phenom coming out of high school. Oh, this guy's amazing. He can dunk from the free throw line. I'll drop a name for you. Back in the day when I was in my near the end of my career, there's this guy named Phil Dixon out of Toronto. I'm telling you,

That guy was LeBron James before LeBron James. And he really was, by the way, like six, seven long could pass, super athletic, great intellect, great player. And so here's this up-and-coming kid, but what's the one thing I'm going to do that they have to have on the team that he's not going to do? He's not going to guard someone for 40 minutes, deny the ball, make every pass miserable. Because those offensive players, you know, they need their energy to make those plays, right? There's a reason that Luca, Kyrie, Steph, you know, you don't hear about them being.

being 40 minutes of held defenders, there's other things they're doing. And there's other roles in the team. So as I got older and older, as long as you can knock down that three and defend, you're going to have a career that can last. And there's a lot of guys in the league right now. That's how they're sticking around. You know, even in the NBA, WNBA, you've got to have defenders. That is a, that is not a, that's not one of those. Well, we, you know, we can, our style of play goes X, X, Y, or you've got to have defenders. It is a rule if you want to win. Every team has to have those guys. team doesn't have to have a guy that can score 50 a game. There's lots of other ways to win offensively. Defense is what it is. You're either getting stops or you're not. And if you can't deliver stops, you're never going to win. So I think that's why the short-term myopic view of sports for AAU people, for parents and AAU coaches trying to get recruiting and get their kids to get into NIL and all that other stuff, they want to flash, they want to pizzazz. So they get that short-term tactical view of this is how I have to manage my career. But in the long run, playing and having staying power and being a complete player doesn't have the other side.

So it's usually an afterthought. And that's why I think parts of the reason the game is suffering, but I also think that's why the focus is off on what's really winning. If you talk a lot of coaches, they'll tell you that. They'll tell you that the wild card is always, you know, all things being equal between two players, you'll take the better defender. If everything else is a tie, right? Yeah. It needs to be said on repeat. And this is the thing.

So we're talking to Dave Turcott. Dave played at Colorado State, part of the several Canadian Olympic basketball teams. And there's so many stories that we'll get to later about that Olympic process, your matchups against the U.S. teams from those eras. We'll get to those later in this episode. But you're talking about winning. And I think some of it gets missed from the coaching side.

about one defining what winning is, like how it happens. There is a process to it. And then the backside of that is in today's game, everything is so temporary that, as you said, you had multiple coaches and there are problems that happen when there's no consistency in the coaching position. So I'll ask you how to build a program, what's good for basketball,

and keeping players in a program at a university, coaches honoring contracts. You get a part of the legal, the contracts and all those things. Turk, how do we fix the base level things of defining what's good for the game and then putting it in operations? You know, it's interesting on the lawyering side, right? Like another guy that I'm a fan of in the media, Jay Billis, right, who also has a law degree, I believe.

And see, that's the thing that I think. So first and foremost, What I love about what's happening now is, and by the way, I was one of the guys back when I was playing saying, hey, you join a program that's failing economically or not winning and you come in and you help a program win. That's worth millions of dollars to your school, right? We talked about Nick Saban saying, well, you know, this isn't really what it used to be. I don't like where this is going. Well, yeah, because Nick, you're making $7 million a year and your players are making nothing. So, yeah, in a change of world where we've got to divide up that economic pie,

to share with players. I am all about recognizing these young men and women are 18 and over. They can serve in the military. They're coming to bring economic value. And I am totally a fan of all of the things that recognize what it took for them to get there. Okay. So first and foremost, this is not any criticism of the evolution of sports and the revenue recognition that players that were theoretically amateurs, you know, five years ago and beyond. I like the trend to equalizing that and giving economic relief. Okay. Now, having said that, if you're talking about, if the end goal for any program is, on a youth basis, is I want to get kids that have an opportunity to play Division I and beyond. The first reality is in this world, Charles Barkley steps in, well, now you're

only talking, if you're just say Division I College Basketball, well, now you're talking about one-tenth of one-tenth of one-tenth of one percent of all of the players that are going to run through your program, right? So if you think about a normal high school program at a regular city, not the top high school, not Mount Vernon or wherever where Kobe went and not these, these aggregating high schools where they bring in superstars from all outside. I'm talking to a regular high school trying to do a great program. You know, you're not going to see a lot of those from, you know, like I live in Utah, how many NBA level or Division I level players are coming out of, you know, all of high school

sports for all the schools? There may be 10 or 15 good players in a state of 3 million people, right? So programmatically, I think a lot of it falls on the parents. Parents are trying to push their kids into what they call as many opportunities as they can, but it's more like the opportunity to get into a showcase to show off skill sets. I think a lot of it is recognizing that that needs to be balanced out with there are opportunities for that, make them more selective, really teach kids men and women the long-term need to realize what it takes to perfect your craft as an athlete, which means, and this is where I am all into the things

that Kobe has said, what about the time for mindfulness and meditation and getting your head right about who you are, spiritually, personally, physically, emotionally as an athlete. Number one, take the time for that mindfulness as an athlete to help make you, that improves your performance over time. Go to work. Put down the iPhone, get out of social media, get off all that crap. There is no substitute. There is no, DP, one word that I hate, there is no hack for playing competitive sports. It's a life hack. I mean, everyone's looking for the, hey, I did three clicks on my phone and I'm getting drafted in the first round, like never happened. Okay. So get rid of that idea that there's a shortcut. There is not. So in other words, quit defending your kid or impeaching the coach for more playing

time and I'll give you a perfect story in my own personal life with my own daughter who is a soccer player. You know, the issue is like, well, playing time and coaches and other stuff and parents come to me and I said, hey, you need to go to work. You have to be so good. The coach has to keep you on the field. Stop complaining. Stop looking for someone else to bail you out of the fact that you're just not that good where you can demand playing time. You know, and that, I think, is that whole notion of this is a long, you know, you want to be a professional or a college player. It is, I love that, I forget who, I don't know who did it, DP, but I love this whole notion of perfecting your craft.

This is what I do, right? And so for me, it's like thinking of it that way that this isn't something I'm going to figure out in one summer. This isn't something I'm going to figure out because I went to so-and-so's NBA All-Star Camp or I got it. And my day, it was getting invited to five-star or Nike or whatever. You're not figuring this out in a week. You're going to learn some things, and then you better go to work for a couple of years and work on that jumper. You've got to grind and grind and grind. And I think if we thought more about the mindset of a young athlete, forget about being entitled, forget about your expectations,

just go to work. And if you go out there and blow people away because of your skill and your work, you're going to get as much playing time as you want. You're going to get as many opportunities as you want if you do the work. And I think that's where, as I think about the biggest problem leading up to D1 programmatically, it's at that youth level. From a college level, I would put it a little bit differently where then the business and the portal changes things because it used to be you could lock up an athlete for maybe five years, right? But now you can't.

Remember we all used to joke about Calipari and the one and done rule? Hey, I'm going to bring them in for one year. And then they're all going to go to the league. And then I'll bring in the next talented thing. Speaking of which, look at Calipari's exit, you know, you know, That you have to, I think what I love about the NIL thing is, is that you have to be able to communicate to a young athlete. Yes, this is how you're part of a team. This is my expectations for accountability.

This is what our work ethic is like. This is what our culture is like. But also, and this is where a smart coach will go, but this is how I'm your best path forward to achieve the dreams you want to achieve as an individual. Yes, the team always has to be the context, the canvas, upon which a great, player can create great art on the court, on the field, wherever. But coaches today that don't have, now they have to earn that players trust that they're really going to put it out there. And if you go to a couple of kids, and you know on social media, right, if I'm recruiting you DP as a college athlete, and I say, you know what, DP, you're going to start, you're going to get this opportunity.

Here's what's going to happen. It's on you. I'm with you. I support you. And I lie about that to get you to sign for me with another year. And you ride the bench. And instead of being a star, you average six points a game one year and it kills your professional personal stock. As a coach, I'm only going to get to do that once. And social media will roast that coach alive as it should, as it should, you know. So I do think now what I really like about the way the economics have shifted, I don't think it's about the players being accountable. What I think is a lot of coaches don't like being held accountable.

Coaches don't want to be accountable. Athletic departments don't want to be accountable. They don't even want to acknowledge that all these great kids have brought so much economic value to the program. You know, there's always the negative of all of the entitled athlete that shows up to think they should get everything. Okay. Hey, really, Nick Saban, and I always use Nick because he's one of the highest profile coaches that makes an enormous amount of money. Really? Okay, you need $7 million a year.

You can't survive on five. Like your love of personal passion, if you're not getting $7 million and you're only making $4 million a year as a coach, You know, that's not a, your passion plus four million a year isn't enough to keep you in the game. You can't spread $3 million a year amongst 30 or 40 players. Really? See, that hypocrisy is what I struggle with because I hate it when they talk about that old school chariots of fire, amateur sport and the beauty and the value of sport. That's great, as long as we're all in the same economics, right? As long as the money rules apply to all of us, yes, I'm all about amateurism.

And just so, you know, D.P., when I was playing college, I got my scholarship, I had no money. I lived on $40 a week from my parents. That's all they could afford. It was like food, and if you're lucky, maybe a movie. Yeah, I mean, Turk, again, this is why I really was excited about being able to bring you into these conversations because there's logic and sanity and intelligence. And it just changed a perspective. We'll go to break. When we'll come back, we'll pick up there because I do want to ask him as a coach and as a player,

how you focus a whole season, what the priority is. Like now you're into the far extreme, but you're paid as a major to win in the regular season, be successful in the regular season, then conference tournaments, and then national tournaments. And I want to ask him as a player what that mentality was like, how he went through the process of defining what success meant, regular season, postseason international tournament. Dave Turcott, D.P., here on 93-7, The Ticket. Back to one-on-one with D-P, sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul,

on 93-7 The Ticket and The Ticket FM.com. Welcome back to one-on-one on a Monday, and David Turcott, Colorado State, one of their top, I want to say top seven. Probably the number varies, but, again, legitimate. And how many Olympics were you in? How many Olympic teams did you make kind, sir? Two for sure, three maybe if you include being an alternate when I was still in high school in 1984.

Okay, so that's why I asked the question, right? So now wrap your brain around this in the conversation, that he's so good that he's an Olympic alternate while in high school. and from an American standpoint, you're looking at Shaq, and that's it. It counts. Like there's Shaq,

and that's it. It's not jelly bean, Joe Brian, it's not Joe Willoughby, it's not Daryl Dawkins, Turks in a unique and elite situation. So walk me through that, process, right, that you're identified as having the talent and you're putting in the work. How did how did you end up in that situation, Turk? Tell us. Yeah, well, you know,

it was amazing how fast it happened. And the one thing that I had an advantage of, remember I told you about being physical and being an athlete. Well, I've been playing hockey since I was three years old. Okay. So what that meant was now think about what a hockey player does it's all about big powerful lower body but it's all lateral speed like the faster you are laterally so literally my lateral quickness footwork like hockey was a great preparer for that it also made ankle strong knee strong lower body strong so from a physical perspective i was always a little bit ahead of high school i was still 2008 9 almost 10 pounds and in high school right so that's a pretty big and i'm only 6 2 at the time 6 3 i think i taught

popped out about 6.2.5, maybe 6.3 in height. So that's, you know, 6.3, 2, 10. That's a pretty good size guard, you know, a combo guard kind of one two player. So basically in Canada, though, I will tell you, though, we really didn't have much of a national program. You know, one of the things that I kind of bristle at a little bit is everybody in the American audience believes that Canadian basketball was born when Vince Carter showed up at the Raptors and we got an NBA franchise, right? And I'm like, kind of no. But the truth is we really, so remember in the last show, we talked about Jack Donoghue, which coached at Lou Al-Sinder then, but Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in high school in New York. Right. Coated Holy Cross.

And then when Canada got the 1976 Olympics, we were hosting and we were going to be able to put a team in, then it was like, oh, we better get serious about this whole basketball thing. And so Canada's national Olympic team program was really born on a large scale. We had a national team, but really thinking about it nationally and looking at it in a programmatic way, it really kind of crescendoed into 1976. So we come in, that team does okay, didn't medal or anything like that, but we participated. Then the 1980 team was much, much better, but that was the year of the Russian boycott. So in 1980, I'm basically a ninth grader, okay? And so I had a kid in, so here's how it starts.

One of the greatest players in the history of our country. In fact, the guy that walked Steve Nash. So like there's such a close community. You know, when you talk about high school players that made the national team in the history of Canada, there are three. Leo Routens, which was a 13th pick overall Syracuse. That's it. That's it. Yeah, sir.

Steve Nash, after me and then me. So I'm in the middle of those two guys. And Leo, of course, was a hero of mine. And Steve was the, and Steve is the greatest Canadian ball player that's ever lived, obviously. And he will be for probably forever, okay. But I will tell you that, and I have a great Steve Nash story that I'll tell you later about some other stuff that I'd love to share that I want people to understand mindset goes to our earlier stuff. But what happened was is that we started to do regional teams and we started to do provincial teams and we started to have these tryouts in these tournaments. It just, we were doing, I was doing a camp with this guy, Eli Posquale.

ninth grader and I'm bouncing around and I can't really play basketball very well, but I just for whatever reason fell in love with the game, right? So then came back to next year as a 10th grader, taller. And of all the 10th graders, I'm the only one dunking a basketball and doing any of that kind of stuff and immediately got picked up by a regional team where the junior national team coach happened to be there. So what would be my junior year in high school, they picked me up. And so it would have been 1982, 83, I think, picked me up and like, well, we're just putting together kind of our first junior national team ever. We need guys that play and are physical. And so they put me on the team. And I wound up scoring about 25 a game for that team and

touring the world and going over to play in Spain and all over Spain and Italy as part of that junior national journey. But for us, it was very organic where they were looking all over the country. The coaches were traveling, looking for, hey, anybody know who the players are? They went, you know, obviously Canada's geographically bigger than the United States, but it's about one-tenth of population, right? All of Canada's population is less than the population of California. I think we're like 37-38 million in the entire country, right? But the good news is most of us live within 100 miles of the U.S. border. So the search parameters were pretty good. So they hit every major city and they went looking for players having discovery camps. And so here I am in this

camp and, you know, I just had some things I could do at an early age, all because of this Eli Fosquale guy that was this great mentor to me to me. to Steve and to Nash and to many others that came after him. And, you know, he passed away, sadly, a couple years ago of cancer, but like just an absolute legend in our country. And because of him, I fell in love with the game. Because of him, I got involved in the regional tournaments and the discovery process. He told me, hey, go to these camps, go to these places.

And if you can play, they'll grab you. And they did. And so when the junior national thing happened, it went really, really well. I was even surprised myself. I was just being, I didn't, like it was one of those things where as a young kid, I had no idea that I was a young player and a rookie and I shouldn't be thinking like I'm going to walk out there and own the building. I just didn't know.

Right. It reminds me, you remember when Arizona won the national championship when they had like Simon and the two young cats? And they kept saying, these guys have no idea the game that they're in. They have no idea knowing that they shouldn't even be here. Well, that was me. I had no idea. By the way, when I walked out there looking like a hockey player,

like who's this dumb hockey player meathead thinking he's going to come out here. And of course, I just went at him like, let's go. You know? I didn't know any better. And so I just went after and it turned out really well. And, you know, it's kind of launched it from there. Well, we're going to have to, like, I know that you broke some hearts by telling people that Steve Nash is the greatest Canadian player ever because the Bill Winnington mob will come after you pretty quickly and pretty heavily. Well, new time MVP, you're going to have to suck that one up, folks.

But Billy is great. Billy was a teammate of mine for a. a lot. And by the way, Billy, one of the great human beings on the program in our program's history. I think he does media for the Chicago Bills to this day, the Bulls to this day. Great human being, great player, great guy. And again, like you got to remember, when I'm on the national team, I'm like 18. Billy's 26. Like everybody I played with were nine, 10 years older than me. Right. And so here's this kid. Nobody wanted hanging around. And Billy was always really kind and gracious just a great mentor to me. And so even though you say that, and I say Steve Nash and they,

but he is one of our greats too and always will be, right? Who are some of the other names, Turk? I mean, even currently, as we were talking about with international ball, getting ready to be the focus again, that Canada has some talent. Talk to me about some of Canada's great talent. Well, you know, my favorite player, Canadian right now, is everyone in the world's favorite player right now. And it comes to the point guard position other than Luca,

and that's Shay, SGA. out of Oklahoma Thunder, right? I mean, he's killing it. He'd probably be the MVP, I think, if it wasn't so much, you know, what are you going to do about, you know, Denver and Yolkich, right? Like, he's just untouchable as an MVP candidate. But Shea is amazing. Then I've got, we got Jamal Murray. Kelly Olenick was with the jazz, which was great. We got to see each other once in a while in the grocery store and passing kind of thing. But you see you've got Kelly Olenick, that's a great foundational, older, experienced player that knows how to let the ball run through him to get to players. Trey Lise is one. Andrew Wiggins, great. Obviously, you know,

and it's really interesting with Wiggins is a wild card for me because you've seen him play like in the playoffs last year. He can come out there and in the highest level in the world, be dominant if he wants to, right? Yeah. Doing great. Corey Joseph, great backup. Tristan Thompson is a Canadian player. Corey and Tristan, of course, played at Texas together. You've got Chris Boucher, who's with the Raptors, you know and you i mean we've got a roster 12 people deep of all NBA players right that are going to be out there causing a lot of heartache for some folks so it's going to be a lot of fun turk i mean that's why i want to like i got goosebumps just thinking that the game has evolved and developed in such a way that that list of players like if you said to me this is an olympic team where does the world stand on

notice the answer is yes and i i think you have to to go back and say, listen, they stand on the shoulders of guys like Bill Wendy and Dave Turkot, Steve Nash, Pascali, Triano. There's some guys that went back and built this thing when it wasn't the focus. It wasn't priority. Hockey's always going to be that thing. They managed to create that in Canada. And I'm glad you're doing the work to keep those stories alive and to keep those folks in the public visibility. I don't want that to ever be a thing. Turk, we're go to break. Well, come back. I'm going to ask you to load up one of the

dream team stories. I'm going to ask you, and it doesn't have to be the one that people think you're going to tell, but any story that you want to tell facing an USA Olympic team, I want you to load that up and give it to us when we come back. You're listening to one-on-one with DP,

sponsored by Mary Ellen's Food for the Soul on 93-7 The Ticket and the Ticketfm.com. It's always going to be a fast hour when Dave Turcott is in the conversation, and it's much appreciated. You folks who have been on the streams, thank you very much for hanging out with us and adding to and greatly appreciate it. Turk, we were talking about Canadian Olympics and to think, listen, you've been in some spaces that are pretty incredible. And again, the list of just your teammates, people that you've played with and helped build this thing along the way. but there's a you know there's situations that happen and canada ends up being matched up

against some u.s. a Olympic teams and so I'll ask you and again of the course we'll do this again next Monday because quite frankly um I'm enjoying the conversations and I I know Harrison I'll ask you to chime in these have been really good yeah I'm learning I can say that like these have been really good so I'm appreciative of you Turk for making time and adding to the value and content on this station. But let's talk, Team Canada versus Team USA, is there a story of note? And again, it doesn't have to be you, you against Jordan. It could be you. It could be the Canadian team and any U.S. team. What story comes to mind? I'll give you two for one. Okay. And they will be 92. So first thing off, any discussion of any other team other than the 92 team being called the dream team is ludicrous. I'll just say that right now. because literally think about the scouting report and not so part of the story starts with the

scouting report literally except for christian laytoner okay and maybe the center position slightly because you didn't have kareem or wilt right but literally other than the center position every single player in every position is the greatest player ever played the game in that position not really good okay all-time greatest point guards of all time stockton malone of stockton Johnson. Yep. Magic Johnson is number one on everyone's list to this day. And then you go Stockton.

See, I go Stockton, Steve Nash. I don't know who I would like better because Steve's a better shooter, but, you know, that's just me, right? But then you got Jay Kidowitz, but it's Stockton, Magic, one and two. Best two guards of all time. Yep. Michael Jordan, unparalleled, small forward, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, Caramolo, Power Forward. It's not like they're all pretty good.

No, they're the greatest ever, right? Still to this day. Now, the law, of course, is up there now and getting on the Mount Rushmore. So just for purposes of context, Michael Jordan in 1992, though, that was, I believe, the pinnacle of his greatness. Like, that was the year he dropped 70 on Clyde Drexler's head.

The other guy that was supposedly one of the greatest two guards of all time, right? The Hall of Maymer guy. And he toyed with him. You know what I'm saying? Yep. So that's where, and so here's the story that I'll start with Jordan and I'll reflect it in the game that occurred. So, so speaking to your boy,

Bill Winnington, so we're in the, we're doing the pregame war. And we're going through the team, okay, you know, Billy, you're going to start with so and so. And they're going down the lineups. You're starting with this guy. And we're going through the whole starting lineup and we've done the whole thing. And of course, they saved me for last. And Turk got, you're going to start with Jordan. And it's, and there's like this silence for like five seconds. And then the whole team starts laughing. Like, what do you mean? And here I am. Oh, man.

I wait, what do you mean? I'm going to, you know, I'm out there. I got this guy. We're going to do whatever. But part of it, so part of the story was so that. So first of all, there was that. But then what be decided, by the way, as a strategy, if you go back and watch the game, our strategy was not to go out there and try to like make it all intense and play hard. It was like, look, these guys can obliterate you in a moment's notice, right? If they decide to turn it on, it's over.

So we said, you know what? We're going to be relaxed, light, keep it friendly. Let's just keep it close. Now, I know all these guys, right? So I knew, you know, Carl Malone and all these guys were guys that I played with in earlier years against USA basketball. So I'm walking out there, hey, I got the guy on the, I don't know, you know, this guy, the guy in the Wheaties box, I got him. Yeah. Hey, whatever, it's like, you Turk, whatever.

Everyone knows everybody, okay? Leo, Routens is the start. he knows everybody, Billy knows everybody. Mike Smrek was the other center. He played with the Lakers, right? Yep. Everybody knew everybody. So we're walking out there.

We get going, and of course, by the end of the first half, we're only down like seven, which is like, and we're keeping it close. We're in the game. But the thing with Jordan was, here's the positive one. Very early on, like, of course, you study Jordan all day long. And when Jordan in the open court always had this right in and out, right-hand crossover to blow by you and just take off on the fast break, right? So when he's getting the ball early in the fast break.

So one of the very early plays of the game, I'm like, he's coming right at me full speed. And I'm like, well, let's see if film studies any good. And I kind of fake like I'm going with him. And I jump back in the opposite direction. And sure enough, it surprised him. And he bobbled the ball and I stole the ball. I was so excited to have ripped Michael Jordan that I actually ran in the wrong direction. I just stole the ball for Michael Jordan.

And I ran the wrong direction. And my buddy Ron McMahon, who was just here in Utah with me this weekend. We actually laughed about the story. He's like, Turk this way. I go, oh, yeah. And I passed him the ball. We run up the court. And I'm like, score.

And that's one of those things where, you know, can you imagine what that would be worth to me now on Twitter, Instagram, whatever? It'd be like, retire and buy the house. I just ripped Jordan on in front of it. And by the way, there were over a billion people watching that game. Yeah. Like I think it was at the time, every time the dream team played, like there was a new record. Right. Yeah.

And for Canada at the time, just like now, You know, I was, look, I'm not a real NBA player. We talked about that. I'm one of those guys that got his fingernails on the free agency side, hung out for a bit and eventually got cucked. So I was a borderline guy. Probably could have played under the right circumstances, but not a real player.

But Leo definitely was. Yeah. Billy definitely was. Smec definitely was. And so we had three or four guys that were legitimate NBA players. So of all the teams in the world at that time, we would have had as many NBA players as anyway. And so there was some novelty there.

So anyway, that was one thing. But here's what happens at halftime. You know, here's the story part D. So we're playing pretty close, you know, and I feel like, hey, I've done great. You know, he hasn't blown us out. I think he only had 12 points the entire game, by the way, but that wasn't really because of me. That was just him choosing not to do anything. But we go into the tunnel and here's where the lunacy begins.

We were going down the tunnel and we're all sharing the same tunnel. And we're all going like, hey, everybody, and I'm going like sweet. Nobody's saying anything's real quite young guy on the team. I will not say his name. Just because I don't want him to get any hate for this. He's all excited. See what I mean, fellas? We can play with these guys.

We can hang. We can do all this. We got this. We got this. Magic Johnson turns to me and goes, all right, Turk. I see what's up. And I was just like, oh, man. You know what?

Oh, no. And sure enough, second half, full court man to man. So imagine, and I forgot to mention one of those other little itty-bitty players, you know, small forward greatest, Scotty Pippen, another L-City, right? So imagine the width of a basketball court put Magic Johnson 6-9 in the middle, Scotty Pippen on one side, Michael Jordan on the other, put their arms outstretched. That's enough wingspan to almost cover the entire width of the court, right? And they're coming at you every possession.

Well, we wound up losing by 24 or something like that. So let's just say they just turned it on and said, nope, game over and hit it. I was like, I was like, but it was still phenomenal. And I will tell you, it was hard because you can have all the confidence in the world you want. And I was, you know me, I'm as confident as any guy in the world. But when you're literally trying to look at a player that you're playing and say, you know, what's the weakness in this guy? Like, and that's where I get really bothered.

But remember last time I said, I hate it when people talk about a guy like Jordan or a guy like Kobe or Jerry. Rice or Carl Malone or fill in the blank greatest of all time, LeBron James, the people that say like they are that guy because, oh, they just came out of the womb like that because they had so much talent that they're just, that's, they're just lucky. And, you know, that's some loser saying, well, I would be as good as them, too, if I was as talented, right? And that's a disgusting lie that is a discredit to their legacies as player. Michael Jordan, what I love about him and what I love about Steph Curry in today's game, watch his footwork, watch his seat. Watch his skills. He was fundamentally perfect. Right hand, left hand, dribbling, posting up. Like, when you look at him as a

player, I looked at him and felt like there isn't any part of his game that I can deal with. Now, let's take, I'll go down the line. Magic Johnson, I'm quicker than him. And believe it or not, lower body strength, I would be stronger than him. So I could, because my lower center. So there's, he's, of course, he's the greatest of all time. But with Magic Johnson, he would, I could at least make, him do things where he would have to make a play in an area where he was quasi uncomfortable. Okay. Think about Clyde Drexler, incredibly right-handed player. Get on his left hand, make him move more to his left.

Don't let him come back to a strong right hand. He's still going to make plays, but he's not going to shoot 51%. He's going to shoot 37% going to his left, right? Scotty Pippen, bump him, hit him early. Make him pull back and hit a mid-range jump shot because Scotty either had a flat-out, naked, wide open step in three with nobody around him or he's finishing at the rim, but nothing in between. So you could go down all of those players and say,

there's something that they're not good at that I could try to force them into a shot, that it's at least not a really high percentage shot. You're not stopping any of those guys. And let me make it very clear. DP, I'm not saying, yeah, I give Magic Johnson fits. No, I didn't. But I can make Magic Johnson. I have something I can do to try to make a point.

that's a lower percentage outcome play for the win. Okay. With Jordan, it was literally like, you know, and his greatness was because of it, like no wasted energy. All yes, a lot of athletic ability, sure, but no wasted energy. Perfect footwork, timing, skill sets. You know, the things he could do that were so great was because of an incredible level of skill.

By the way, that you know that you only get when you got five older brothers kicking your ass in the driveway at home, forcing you to learn how to score against bigger, taller, older brothers that are trying to beat you down every day. I bet you the toughest players he ever had to play against were at home. Yeah, his old brother. Yeah, he's an old brother. Being a 12-year-old kid playing against your college skill level brother who's just not going to give you a break, right? So that's why I always try to make that point about it really is something to say that it's the only time in my life. I've guarded every other player that you can can imagine. It's the only time in my life I really felt like there's really nothing I can do

to make this guy do something he doesn't want to do. Man. And that was the thing. That's the difference. You know. Turk, here's it. It's so good. This is what we're going to.

Again, we're going to do this again next Monday night. We're going to keep you in the roster, kind, sir. I got you in the game. I need to keep you in the game. Turk, much appreciated, brother. I'll text you as soon as we get done here. Hey, always great. Great to see you guys.

Thanks so much. Honor to be involved. So we'll see you next time. Thank you, brother. That's Dave Turk. I, good stuff. Harrison Arns, don't let them go anywhere. D.P.E. is up next here on the ticket and the ticket weeknights.