Pablo Torre Finds Out - The (Summer School) Sporting Class: Sex, Dolan and Contract Haircuts

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

Did the Knicks owner's pump-up speech help them win it all? Did their players stop fornicating because of it? How much do billionaires matter to championships anyway? And should superstars sacrifice millions for the greater good? David Samson and Domonique Foxworth chart the power and powerlessness of the billionaire class.• Subscribe to "The Domonique Foxworth Show"• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is. You haven't lived, David Samson, till you've been out. Right after this ad. Are we going to call this the sporting class? Well, on that note, on that very note that Dominique just muttered under his breath. Are we calling this a sporting class? Are we calling this something else?

It's your name on the show. I know what I would call it. Where's Skippy? What would you call it? Skippy's on real vacation, actually, I think. Is that what it's called? I don't know. I feel like there has to be a frame of reference for it to be a vacation.

Well. If you're always on vacation, it's not vacation. With that attitude. David Sampson, former president of the Marlins, John Skipper, former president of ESPN, Dominique Foxworth, former president of the NFLPA. These are the characters in what we're calling this sport. What?

Pablo, you've never been a president of nothing. That's not true. Don't bring up no high schools. Don't bring up no high schools. The president of my high school debate team. Uh, yeah. An elected position. I have a constituency.

Um, I'll have to get in line. All the sports media people who are. There's only one. There's not all. There's just one. Who's the second? I take the over. Wait, you have information that you're not willing to disclose.

There's another person in sports media other than you and Stephen A. He needs, he needs more. Are you journalizing? He needs more evidence. He can't just start spewing stuff. That's right. Some credibility. Dominique, is it you?

Running for president. Absolutely not. We need to start this show. We need to start summer school sporting class now, I think. The thing Dominique was saying, about what is it that management does and how do we value it and how do we praise it, despite having great skepticism, at least from this chair, about it, brings us to one of the great apparent character developments in the history of sports,

which concerns the owner of the next James Dolan. And I don't need to belabor all of the reporting and investigating we've done on this show, which is exhaustive and worthy of such attention, I dare say. Private surveillance state, the mismanagement of the team, his friendship with Donald Trump, all of the stuff we talk about it. But the thing that happened, Dominique, which I want people to appreciate,

is that a podcast hosted by Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, the account posted a long-rumored video of James Dolan giving a pep talk that preceded the entire championship run. And before we judge it, in case you haven't seen it, Here's just a taste of James Dolan motivating. But right now, this time, or as close as I've ever seen a team be going into the playoffs. What that would mean to win a championship, to get a ring, to have your, ultimately at your numbers up on the Raptors, right?

You will forever, ever be a part of New York City. no matter where you go and what you do the rest of your lives when people introduce you even if you become the president of the United States right they'll start off with NBA champion 2006 so Dominique I want to start with David David you grew up a Knicks fan you worked directly for your father-in-law the step formerly stuff on doing this formerly it's okay you probably read it wrong Yeah. But your experience among the billionaire class, the sports ownership class on the inside,

leads you to feel what when you hear James Dolan do something that has made him likable? There were 20 of those, Pablo. So here's what people are not reporting. 20 owners met their teams before the playoffs. And one of them was right. And this was a great speech. There's no question.

But owners meet the team when spring training starts or when its season starts. They are sometimes doing it during season once if something is going on bad. But motivating players is something that managers do and presidents and other teammates. I found the speech to be fantastic because it ended up being right. And I've talked to players about sex before. I've talked to players about obituaries before and having the first line of your obituary written. We will explain the sex thing in a second, but keep going.

And, well, sex is a thing. But anyway, I thought it was great, Dominique. now, does it make players run through a wall? Does it help them hit shots and win games? I don't believe any of that I never have. But now as we look back, it was a great part of what happened. Yeah, I mean, the speech was fine.

I think that the speech was more for him than it was for the players. I think generally, I'm not a big, like, pre-game speech guy, or oftentimes, I kind of stopped doing this and some people give me a hard time, but there used to be a stretch

like when I was in NFL and recently out NFL, people who had like teenage sons who were not necessarily getting everything done. They were like, hey, would you talk to them? And I would do it thinking that I was having some impact. And I kind of stopped doing that because I was like, eh, it's just a waste of my time and their time. In order to have some sort of impact, you need to have like a real relationship with somebody and some sustained contact and like something invested in it. And it just feels like lip services that I'm just going to say, hey, hit them books and you're going to straighten out. I feel the same way about some of these speeches where it's like, I mean, if Dolan's in there

sweating with you, and that tends to be the way it feels with me, it's like when there's players who are out there with me, or even coaches, if they have something invested. And of course, he has money invested, but it's different. When someone is in that room with you and they're talking about it and then you go out and you are too tired to do one more rep, but that person is doing another rep, I guess that's where I have a hard time of like figuring out this value. The value it adds is are they actually about to do the thing that James Dolan thinks is going to hurt their chances? And then James Dolan face pops in their head. They're like, you know what? I ain't fucking a night. I'm not going to have

sex. My man, Jimmy D. was like, we got a sacrifice. Jimmy probably f***ed a night, but I ain't going to do it because we got a win. Like, I don't know, maybe. I'm sorry to ruin the fun, but it just didn't resonate with me. No, no, no, this speech, again, the rest of it, it's long. It's like 15 or so minutes maybe. It's him talking extensively about how for the next 10 weeks, you need a sacrifice. And I will give my interpretation as well of why, of A, why he said it, but B, Y was released this way.

Part A, why did he say it? I mean, there was to Dominique's point, a lot of we, but I could really use this. This will change you and it will change me. And I kind of appreciated that level of transparency when he's like, I, this will change how I am thought of. I want this very badly. And in fact, just to that point, let's hear a little bit more from Mr. Dolan. I had this idea that maybe you should give up sex for the next 10 weeks.

You don't have to give up sex for the next thing. But, but like Spartans, you know what Spartans are? They denied themselves, right, so that they could have an edge. Can I tell you the car lary that I would tell players? To the no-sex Spartan suggestion. You can absolutely have sex before a big game. Just don't stay up on like trying. That was how I tried.

Or do not, there is no try. Just listen, that would be my view. And I would talk to- You know with that Yoda. And I had that talk, Dominic, and I think you'd agree. With nothing good happens with executives or players at the bar at 4 a.m. Like, just nothing good. That's when I get the call at 7 a.m.

That there's an arrest or there's a lawsuit, something bad. So I really was a big fan of, like, between 8 p.m. and midnight. And then go to bed and get ready for the game. Yeah. I mean, that's all. fine and good. The probability, the fact of the matter is the probabilities shift the later it gets and the probabilities for extremely awesome things to happen goes up also. No one ever tells you that. A horseshoe. No one ever tells you that. Yeah. See, see, you don't know. No one ever tells you that.

I've been a part of the not awesome at 4 a.m. No, I know you've been a part of, but I don't understand what you're saying. You're saying that things get better at 4 a.m.? Go ahead, Dominique. I'm sorry. No, no, no, you're fine. I wasn't stopping because you were cutting me off. I think the way you're so incredulous about this is helpful. So I think that there's always balance. If only really, really bad things happened at 4 a.m., nobody would be out at 4 a.m., David.

Like, the fact that matters, no one tells those stories. This is kind of how it works in everything. It's like you have a low-risk investment. you know that you're not going to lose 10x, but you only possibly could gain 2x, and you might only lose half what you got. The same thing occurs the later you stay out at night. And there's a point at night where something incredible is going to happen tonight.

Yeah. It might be in my favor, and it might not be in my favor. This is the truth. I'm just telling you. I like that Dominique has explained the sex graph for late night rendezvouses for people in sports the same way that venture capitalists see their portfolio. I think he's confusing slump busters with actual. So I'm not sure what you're doing.

But I just haven't experienced that in my career. I've had some, I've had fun at 4 a.m. Don't get me wrong. But it was already a feta-com plea by 2 a.m. So I'm talking about new fun at 4 a.m. is harder to come by. I think you, yeah. But it's okay.

We're going to have a conversation off air, because I believe that... We should have it right now. Right now. What do you mean? Let's break out some graphs. No, I mean, I think I used the venture capital explanation because I thought that it would resonate with David,

but do you not understand... I mean, obviously you understand the concept of, like, risk, volatility. Like, yeah, it's the same thing applies. And I'm telling you to me it's riskier at 4 a.m. because there's people out who are looking for bad things. I agree, David. I agree. And when you put money in a riskier investment, you're likely to get higher.

gains. So if you are operating at a riskier time where people's inhibitions are lower, the inhibitions that would cause something bad to happen are lower. But the inhibitions that would cause something incredible happen are higher. I think that you only believe that you've only been able to imagine a roof on how awesome the night can be. It's like, yeah, this one person in me, that's it. That's the roof. I can do that at midnight. I can do that at two in the morning. I can do that at four in the morning. What I'm telling you, David, what I'm telling you, David, is at four, five, six in the morning, at a long night,

that is not the roof, David. That is not the roof, David. Let me let you know, you haven't lived, David Sampson, till you been out. Late, late, late. I appreciate the advice. I'm touched. It's like Chris Cringle for me over here, like Black Santa.

I really love this. Dominique said at the very beginning that he stopped giving pep talks to wayward youth. And here we have exactly that. And hit them books. Wayward adults. Let's clip David saying that. I will pep talk a wayward adult.

I'm not offended by Dolan at all. I must tell you that and do I think he needed to win this title to somehow that now he's reclaimed? He's the owner and the Knicks won a title for the first time in 53 years. It doesn't change the way he is. And it's doesn't change the way that he'll be remembered, it adds a line to his obituary. Well, it changes the way he'll be remembered. And that is, I think, what we're grappling with

right now is to what degree should it. As, by the way, Carl Anthony Towns, his fiancee, apparently is not a fan of the policy that has been previously debated now about the sex ban, all that stuff. The real sort of to get to the brass tacks of it, it's how should we think of James Dolan now? What has changed? What priors are we updating? Can I ask that in a different way? When you think of George Steinbrenner, do you think about the scandals? Do you think about the suspensions? Do you think about the turtleneck?

Do you think about the way he was with managers and Billy Martin? Do you think about the championships? Or is it an amalgam that his legacy is all of those things that he did, and that is the memory of George Stenbrother? I think the obituary is a really good lens to answer this question through because you've got to make choices about how you structure it. what's most important. And George Steinbrenner, I mean, I will literally look up his New York Times obituary. I'm actually curious how they put it because in my mind, of course, I lead with he won all of the time.

He didn't win all the time. He didn't win until they got, it's so funny that that is your memory. But of course. He was terrible. But this is, but this is. Can I, can I settle this please? I think, I think that it's just about your proximity to the person and your proximity to when they died. And I think David being a baseball person has a much fuller, and being slightly older, has a much fuller understanding of who George Steinbrenner was. And for me, I'm even further away from it than Pablo. Like, I didn't grow up in New York. Like, I think of Steinbrenner, and he's like the prototype or the archetype of like a major league baseball owner to me, and he won a lot of championships. That's really all I have because we're far enough away from it and I'm far enough away from it.

I think the same thing is going to be true for Dolan. It's like Charles Oakley, probably not going to feel great about Dolan. Very close to it. But for most of us, like the vast majority of people, they're going to remember James Dolan as the guy who brought a title to the Knicks. And no matter all other stuff that we're pointing to, that's what it's going to happen. And I don't know if I would write the O bit in that way. But I'm realizing as I look at the New York Times obituary for George Steinbrenner in 2010,

the headline is George Steinbrenner, comma, who built Yankees into powerhouse, comma, dies at 80. And here's the first sentence by Richard Goldstein, the writer. George Steinbrenner, who bought a declining Yankees team in 1973, promised to stay out of its daily affairs, and then, in an often tumultuous reign, placed his formidable stamp on seven World Series championship teams, 11 pennant winners, and a sporting world powerhouse valued at perhaps $1.6 billion, died Tuesday morning at a hospital in Tampa, Florida, where he lived. he was 80, period. And then it goes on from there.

So the seven was a big part of that. So query, if it had been one, is the sentence the same, but the seven becomes a one. And if there's one pennant in one World Series, I'm not sure it may just be comma owner of New York Yankees or owner of World Champion, World Series winning New York Yankees.

Jim Dolan's obituary will be a long, complicated one because of everything that he's done in his life from Cable Vision on to... But you can almost copy the first part of the sentence. promised to stay out of its daily affairs and then in an often tumultuous rain won the New York Fri-Nex their first championship in 53 years.

And I think that, I mean, the thing that I laugh at with this speech, Dominique, is it reminds me of how people have often talked about Trump whenever Trump does something that people somehow, for the first time in memory, kind of like. And it's like, finally, James Dolan is the president.

finally he is behaving he has finally become the thing the office that we wanted him to live up to that's what this speech has given him for I think the first time and my sort of gut reaction is yes the comment section should celebrate this I get it

but this is this does not change how I think of him this is kind of a piece with his whole deal but you're Oakley so there's plenty of people who aren't about Steinbrenner by reading that first sentence. There's plenty of people got fired by him,

plenty of people who did not have good business dealings with him. You can walk inside an owner's room, an owner's meeting, and get 28 different first lines of the obituary about George Steinbrenner. So Dominique had it right. It's all about your proximity, relationship, and also about when he dies. If Jimmy Dolan lives for 40 more years and gets nothing else accomplished, then it's a interesting question about what sentence the NBA championship

would be in. I think we landed on a name for this. Dominic has it right. That's pretty much how these go when the three of us get together. You guys. You guys say stuff. Then I clean it up and then we walk away agreeing that we're so grateful that Dominique has it right because otherwise we'd be in the wilderness going to bed at midnight thinking that that's all the best that could happen. Also, back to the speech. I do appreciate, I didn't listen to the whole speech. I couldn't do it. But I do appreciate that the concept of, and hopefully he went down this path of like acknowledging that he is in this situation, he is nothing. Like I, the thing I want most, the thing that is most important to me, that is so valuable

that will change the way people think about me, change the way I feel, will define my life, that's in your hands. I'm a billionaire that can do anything I want in this world. But the one thing that could change my life, I had nothing to do with it. I will have nothing to do with from here on out. I will give you all by all the ice you need for your muscles. I'll give you all the stem machines to recover. I'll give you the best gym you need.

Basketball's coaches pay you all the money. But now I can't do nothing but watch it. Cheer, please, by God. If it means nothing to you, I want you to know that it means everything to me. That's the speech. Period. Walk out the room. Shed a tear. Midway through.

Shed a tear. That's the speech. All this other bull's about Spartans. Get out of here with that. That's nonsense. All this is, like, acknowledge that he is powerless and he is entrusting all of this to them. I like the perspective, though, Dominique, of explaining to the players that this lasts forever. When you look at, look at all of us, look at me.

I'm 23 years past, and it's still associated. World Series winning team president. players, when they win a ring, it's world champion. When anybody's in the media, a former player, their creeds next to their Twitter handle, it says the best thing they have. If all you have is an All-Star, which is cool, it says All-Star, all-pro.

Cool. If you've been a Super Bowl winner, but if you're Super Bowl MVP, it has that. So it's levers. So every one of those players, they won't be in the rafters. I don't know what he meant by that. I think he meant the team is in the rafters.

They won't have all their numbers retired, obviously. Well, that's ridiculous. He got it on tape. I was going to say. Yeah, that was, you got to sue or I'm suing. He misspoke. No. Ariel Hock-Bority is.

You know this, Dominique. You can't rely on an oral promise. You can't have the four. You can't have the four. I want to get to, though, what the owner did or did not do. Because on some level, it is worth acknowledging that James Dolan, despite, I think, the hopes and dreams of many fans, he's still been quite involved with the team.

The firing of Tom Tibido, replacing him with Mike Brown, James Dolan had his fingerprints all over that. His son, David, his, again, you can imagine the familial dynamic in the NICS ownership group and their executive structure. His son is one of the leaders of the team. He works on the sports science stuff and whatever. His title, I will fact check here. Senior Vice-Vist.

president of player performance slash science leader thank you that what a what a title that just definitely was something i remembered and not had i wonder like does he have science science background it's not it's not like chemistry but so there's a there's obviously a lot of fathers and sons and fathers and daughters who work in ownership uh jimmy dolin's father i think that you should know here who charles dolan is and you should note the dolom family is still involved with the guardians although they have a step transaction with David Blitzer, another name that you all may might know. But that doesn't bother me that his son works,

even though I was a son. I don't think of it that way. I'm merely saying that, by the way, we'll show a photo of Quentin Dolan, who is jacked. So he's familiar with the science at the very least. When you say that, like steroids? I'm not saying that. I'm just saying that.

What a compliment to pay to wonder. No, Jack just means muscular. Jack doesn't mean steroids. Are you jacked? No. Yeah. I'm ripped, honestly. Oh, you're ripped?

Yeah, you don't know this terminology. Jacked is more like swole, like bulky. Ripped is like, spelt, lean, like, you know, you're not familiar with this. Well, what are you, Pablo? I'm, uh... Soft?

A, age? What? I know what I am. I'm puffy. You're not puffy. There's a joke here about maybe a while. I hope you're not puffy. I was going to say, There's a baby oil joke that I am so disappointed to myself for not figuring out yet.

All right. My point is, James Dolan and his family have had his fingerprints, had their fingerprints all over this run. They changed the head coach. Obviously, the entire structure hiring Leon Rose. It's, David, in fairness, when it comes to what did the owner do, he did all this shit. And the updated prior for me is

I didn't think you could win a championship with this guy as the owner and whether it was because or in spite of, which is, I think, netting out to be still quite a debate, it's now obviously doable. And that is, that's news to me. Same with the Yankees, same with, I'm sorry, the teams you played for, Dominique,

do you believe for a second your owner was not involved? I mean, yeah, I do. You do? Yeah, I think the... Who is your principal owner? Was it craft? My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. No one else owns me.

Sorry. Who is the owner of the team on which you played? Who governed you? Yeah, the governors. So, Bolin was in Denver. And he was, like, aging. and this is Pat Bolin, yes. Yeah, Pat Boland, and they ended up selling a team.

So he was getting to a place where if he wanted to be involved. And Mike Shanahan was there and had accumulated a bunch of power. And I mean, I'm sure that he had some decision-making power, but he wasn't day-to-day. I was only in Atlanta for a year with Arthur Blank. So I didn't, like I traded there. It was only there for a few months in the season, so I don't know, his involvement. Then I came to Baltimore where Bashadi was the owner and Ozzy Newsom, famously, like, is very powerful.

So, like, I was at organizations between Ted Sunquist and Shanahan and Denver and Harbaugh and Ozzie Newsom in Baltimore that I think the owners probably weren't as meddling. I get your point. Yeah, they're always very involved in most places, and they probably were involved in these processes also, but I think they were a little more hands-off than most places. It's great when players think that. That would have been our goal. I always wanted to protect our owner from the players thinking that he was behind the moves and we'd eat it a lot.

When there was a required move that came down that was called an O.P. An owner's prerogative, which is there's no debate. We are releasing this player or we are signing this player. We would try to publicly say it was a baseball decision. It was us because we wanted to protect the owner. But I sat in the room, Dominique, and you've seen it too. Just owners are involved. Jeffrey Loria, your former stepfather-in-law?

No. God, God, man. Is it? Stepfather? Just that. Just that. Okay, very good. So Jeffrey Luria, stepfather to David Sampson.

Did he, as the owner of the Marlins, was he sitting in, like, player exit meetings? No. Because that's what Dolan... Can you just say that he was the owner of the team? I'm sorry. It would have been nice, Dominique. Like, I mean, does the stepfather... It feels like unnecessary and condescending.

I'm used to it. Undercutting him. Unless it's relevant to the... It's not. Of course it's relevant. of Dolan and his son. I think it's relevant because what David brings is a behind-the-scenes perspective

that is behind the scenes of even people who are employees of the owner. And so I want to know, for instance, along these lines of invasiveness, familial and otherwise, did Jeffrey Loria ever give motivational speeches? Yes, of course. Of course.

And you watched, did you? I was in the clubhouse, almost every time. And listen, one year they worked. We won the World Series. And 17 years, they didn't work. So there were also speeches during bad times. When Jose died, we addressed the team. So there are times when you address the team when...

Jose Fernandez. He would never be there when we fired the manager, but he'd be there when we hired a manager. So, I mean, there's... The owners just have the right to be in meetings when they want to be in. But, like, for instance, for example, he called Mike Stanton and said, you're called up to the big leagues.

And I'm saying Mike Stanton, because that was his name when he was called up. He's now known as Jean-Carlal Stanton, but his name used to be Mike. But he won't be involved when we release a player. He didn't call Al Leiter and say, by the way, we're designating you for assignment. But that's their right. People don't want to do bad things generally. They just want to do good things. Dominique is already shaking his head.

What don't you believe? I know. I believe all of that. I think I was shaking my head because You can do it. I have skin right now. I'm okay. Oh, no, no, no.

It has nothing to do with, like, hurting your feelings. I'm not worried about that. You've worked at one baseball organization, and I know that owners are involved. I guess the way that you are expressing it is different than I think it takes place in a bunch of different places. And I think the complexity of football changes things. I'm just telling you from meeting with other team presidents

and from being in meetings and from knowing owners, we all, everyone has the same experience. Like if you ask Derek Hall, hey, is Ken Kendrick involved? You know, he's not going to tell the truth publicly, but privately he'll certainly talk about the role Ken Kendrick plays as if, in fact, that conversation has ever taken place. So that's all saying.

Do you remember any of the great speeches? Yeah, what does rhetorically, what do these things sound like? Not unlike Tolens. It's, hey, guys, this is our, we have an opportunity. A big day to do is after the trade deadline. When we'd acquire a player, you'd come in and meet the team and say, all right, guys, we gave you help. Now go, let's go. Let's push through and get to October.

When we were down, down, 3-1 to Chicago, met the team and said, listen, we can win three in a row. We just did it against San Francisco. One game at a time, let's go. And whatever, Dominique, it's still all bullshit. Let me hear you give one. My speech is always the negative one, unfortunately. I'm because the owner does the positive ones. Yeah, now you have your chance.

We're giving you a chance. I will give you the speech that I would give to the team, which is, guys, I need you to help me understand two things, please. Number one, we will pay for your drivers. Number two, I've left a phone number on your chair that is my cell number and the number of a chauffeur company. Do not get arrested for drunk driving. Number three.

Every woman in the hotel when we check in is off limits. Yeah, I'm not. Number four. No, you don't like the first three, Dominique? Hold on. I can't wait for number four. I thought we were going rule of three and I started chime in. I'm trying to do a little better here.

I got one more. One more for you, Dominique. I never heard of rule of four. Well, go ahead. Gentlemen, you are solely responsible for our success on the field. The dysfunction in the front office, the issues that you read about publicly, all of that, managerial changes, none of that matters, because at 705, none of it exists.

Either you win or we lose. So go ahead and go win. And that's how I would end it. Four things. I want to put the fucking music from Independence Day underneath that. Listen, it just happened so many times, Dominique, you've been in team hotels. You know what I mean. It's terrible.

It's terrible. Well, football is so different, man. Like, we are such a unique sport relative to the other major American sports because that stuff on the road, we're in and out business trips. Like, you guys go and stay in a city for an extended period of time. You go back to the same city multiple times. Rule four. Four nights in a hotel.

Yeah. So, like, that's a different experience. And, of course, football players, like, you'll get to a city and somebody might know someone and try to whatever. But generally, you get in, you have. have dinner, you have meetings, we go in our room, we go to bed, we get up, we play football, we go from the stadium

to the airport. It's not the same situation. Yikes. Yeah, it's a business trip. Where's the 6 a.m. stuff? Where's the 4 a.m. fun and that? Yeah, that's in Denver, it's in Vegas. It's wherever you are. Only Denver in Vegas, because I was in a committed relationship after that.

That's right. Sorry. Lock at the record show, Your Honor. I've never seen a player in a committed relationship. ship to anything. Bible reading was what I was going, late at 4 a.m. So I was not moved by your speech. It started

to get better at the end, but I was trying to give you a chance to give the speech that you said that you're never allowed to give. I wanted you to give the motivational pump me up speech, and you just made me scared. It was like... No, I don't want you to be scared. I want you to rise to the moment and play to your ability and be free

from all the distraction. I think that's the for me that strikes me about running a sports team, and it's even worse today, there's so much distraction. There's so many people trying to just bring you down, and in the old days, they wouldn't really be able to do it, and now they can. You know, mental health, unfortunately, was not as big a deal in my time, because there just wasn't this sort of proliferation of anger and negativity, and, you know, we all had death threats, but they were done by email or by regular mail. They weren't done in the comment section. I like that you're longing for the old days when and people would cut out letters in the newspaper.

Right. In magazines to send me, oh. We are, what about those? That it really puts a work in to threaten my life. Now you can just tweet a threat at me? I want, I want my threats to be arts and crafts projects. I wouldn't even go to MLB security over a comment death threat. We only went over things that were sent in the mail,

things that were facts to us back in the day. If you're not threatening to murder me by cutting out letters from magazines, I am not, I am not afraid. I'm sorry, Paolo, that's the absolute truth of how we teams deal with MLV security. Don't bother me with the comment section death threat. There is a level of commitment that would be scary. Like, if you tweet me something threatening, like, all right, you're just firing that out. But if you went to an arts and craft store, bought a glue stick, collected some magazines,

and started cutting and pasting on me? Like, no, this motherfucker's crazy. If I even thought to do that, I would get my sense when I'm at the counter of the store. And they're like, yes, you want this glue stick? Yes, ma'am, in these 12 magazines. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Then I sit down and start cutting out letters. Like, I'm like, don't I got something better to do?

I don't think you need more than two magazines for a death threat. I mean, it's not, you're not writing a Bible. You can find enough letters. No, you want to pre one, man. So, see, what you don't understand is, Most of those are small letters. You're trying to do a real death threat. You need big letters, multiple colors, you need multiple magazines.

You want some perfume ads. Yeah, you got to be able to cut the big... We're joking about something not funny. I was never that scared of them. I disagree. I mean, what are they going to do? What are you going to do? Probably murder you.

Yeah. Just make it fast. The thing that I want to discuss is what enabled this championship? And the thing, perhaps above all else, as we continue to do our financial accounting of this championship, is Jalen Brunson taking a voluntary pay cut? I just think that Jalen Brunson, the whole idea of players taking discounts, and I'd rather Dominique talk about it, I just never had it. I never had a player say to me, please, I'm happy not to get paid what I'm worth if you promise to sign someone else.

I've just never, nor anyone I've spoken to experience that. We've heard players say it, but not mean it. I want to set the table here because typically I'm the guy who has, of course, investigated such things, but I just want to lay this out at face value because I think face value is quite interesting. So Jalen Brunson basically gave the Knicks a nine-figure discount, agreed to a four-year, $156 million extension, instead of waiting a year to sign the five-year, $270 million deal. This was in November of 24. And, yeah, this was a news story that also establishes, by the way, that his dad,

Rick, long-time NBA coach, got elevated to the lead assistant role of the Knicks, and so there was all of this noise back then. But just on the financials of it, Dominique, the idea that a player, the most important player, took that kind of a pay cut, of his own volition, at face value says what as the guy who, of course, was the president of the NFLPA and also the COO of the NBPA? I mean, I, I, the purpose of, of the union and the animating drive of the union is to give the players the power and flexibility to do all the things that they want. If this is something that Jalen Brunson wants to do,

I would be happy for him to do that. My concern is that it creates an expectation for other players and it shifts responsibility from the general managers and the owners. It shifts responsibility for building a good team from them to the players. And if a player who's already having his salary suppressed by a number of different factors, if a player feels that the pressure is you should take less or you don't care enough, to me that feels unfair because like I mentioned, the owners do not have their revenue suppressed in any way, but the players already have.

And I don't think it's fair to have like the GMs when it's your turn, like, okay, you just got me for under market value. for the entire portion of my rookie career. Now you've got to pay me my actual value or closer to my actual value. Now you have to find some other places to make up whatever you're losing. It's not my responsibility. So, like, again, Jalen works out perfect for you. Tom Brady, anyone else who has done it, if you want that to happen, that's fine.

The Jalen situation is even more unique because the GM is his former agent. His agent is the son of the GM. his dad is getting paid by the organization. Like, it's entirely different. Yes. Don't like it. Did he not sign a max deal, guys? Could you just give me some facts here?

Because I must have misunderstood totally. I thought the way it works is that the max deal at that time was four years, 100 and whatever it was. But if he waits a year, then the max deal becomes five years 270. But then he plays a full year without that extension, without that guaranteed money. Do I have the facts right? So how is it the... he was giving the team an extra $113 million when he got all the guarantee that year, the maximum

guarantee that he could get that year. The logic is you take the guaranteed money available to you. He left the extra year on the table, and that provided the flexibility of the team to make all sorts of other decisions that materially allowed them to construct a roster. Okay, that's an amazing way to look at it. But the way we would look at it is that some players choose to take deals early in their career as an example in baseball it happens often you get a guaranteed deal before you've played a game and you give up upside if you're a superstar and you get great upside if you suck and there's a lot of

players who don't make it to arbitration but keep getting paid because they sign guaranteed deals and that's a decision a player makes and the way dominique put it about the union i love which is we put players in a position to give themselves a chance to make a decision and that's what the cba does in basketball we read it every year you can sign now for this but if you wait you can sign for that then. And it's always a huge amount of difference. Coke and I cover this on nothing personal. I think Yokic, I think, is he

an example, Coke of a player who had a chance to do a deal today, or he could wait a year and it would be an extra $180 million for him or something crazy? So I think that's the CBA talking, not necessarily Jalen Brunson. But the value, though, just to be very blunt about this, the value

to a team of a player who will be flexible in the ways that you would prefer around whether or not he will risk not taking the money on the table because he's willing to... How much money is he making per year? Could you do the quick math for me? Yeah, so here's the annual salary of Jalen Brunson, 2526, $35 million. Next season, 38, next season, 40 and a half, next season 43, and that's a player option.

So totaling $156.5 million. And he is a performing top of the league guy. There are other people who sign max deals in the NBA who are not that, who become an albatross, even though they gave the team a discount because they signed it immediately to get the guaranteed money. And then they didn't win a championship and they weren't one of the top five players in the league. But to just do the math here, if Brunson had waited until 25 instead of 24 when he signed the extension, the salaries would have been 46 and change, 50, 54, 57 and a half, 61, a total of 269 million. available to him.

So that is, again, just a matter of your own financial planning, right? Do I want to take the deal that is here, or do I want to maximize? But there's risk involved in that. Sure. If you don't perform in that year, then you may not be offered. It's not a guarantee that he would have been offered that deal. But Dominique, what I'm sort of phrasing here is, here are the two timelines that Jalen Brunson could have gone down.

One of them was the preference of the team, and it enabled a championship. The other one is, you know, a different, probably worse timeline. That's something you could guess at, but I think most players assume that they can have both. And most people assume that they can have both. Like, I don't imagine that very many people are like, who've had this level of success, believe, like, oh, no, I have to take a discount while no one else is taking a discount. I'm sure we all can, and I get the numbers are so big that most of us are like, all right, it's fine either way, but it doesn't feel that way. When you are this unique a talent in this unique situation, I mean, whether there are 20 basketball players at his level or above, like 20 people in the world that does what he does or better.

And like I feel like that should be properly compensated and he shouldn't have to take a pay cut. I understand the system that we live in, but you can do both. You can have sex the night before game and still ball out. Just don't step all right. Well, look, Tom Brady is the example in the NFL, right? So Dominique is saying, well, what if this becomes a template? What if this becomes a template for other players? Can't force players to take, to take, quote-unquote, discounts.

You just can't. My concern is not, you won't be able to force them to, but what I don't like is when, and this happens a lot with the owners. And I think you would agree with me here, David, is I don't like To your point, when the bad stuff happens, they want to fade into the background. So, like, I remember having this fight with a bunch of people every time Dak Prescott's contract comes up. Now all of a sudden, people receding into the background. Like, now it's your turn, general manager, owner.

It's your turn to do your job to find the value. And people start piling on the quarterback or pye on a star player. Like, you've got to take less. You don't care about when if you take less. If Jalen Brunson does this or Jalen Brunson has done this, and we don't say that it's not his responsibility, we should not expect it. A lots of other fan bases will say, I want to start like Jalen Brunton. Why doesn't I start act like that?

And I would say to them, why don't your GM do a better job? Why don't you get a Sam Presti? Do that. Don't look at us and tell us to take a pay cut. Tell your owner to do a better job. That, to me, is the risk that we run. I don't think I believe that Dolan or anybody or Leon Rose. I mean, there could be salary caps for convention.

There could be other ways he got paid. but I don't, in my experience, I didn't go to a player and say, hey, do me a favor and take a discount. We would offer a player what we were willing to pay the player within the confines of our salary structure to build an entire team. Because Jalen Brunson is going to get an extension. And are we going to have the discussion when he's 58 million of the salary cap and the Knicks aren't winning the title? And there's no ability to win around him. Janus is a great example. He won it in Milwaukee.

And then there was no way to have anything around him. It just didn't work. By the way, it's happening in Cleveland now. It's going to happen in San Antonio when Fox starts making the Max next year. I'm not upset with Fox. He got offered a Max. He took it. It doesn't make him a bad guy.

I don't think players are bad people for taking some deals. You aren't. You aren't, but sometimes fans are. And the people like that are cutting out letters and sending them, they're upset. That's where they come from. They're like, we could have a championship. This entire conversation, what I'm trying to do here, though, is more precisely quantify what is the true value and responsibility of the thing that is the most important aspect of what we do here in sports,

which is try to win the championship. And the thing at the end here that I'm brought back to is, how much did this mean to an unpopular owner who now perhaps has his obituary restructured, who now has fans defending him in comments, who now is a template because things worked to reverse engineer based on his own decision-making. And of course, I am talking about Jeffrey Loria, David Sampson's stepfather. Winning fixes everything. That's it. I mean, that's the end of it.

His first line is now champion. Dolan is a forever champion. But you saw it, though. You saw the way in which the Marlins, as this case study, deeply, comically unpopular owner, wins. But his obituary will start with World Series winner. I thought we're talking about that. Dolan in 10 years, if the Knicks don't win again, remember, we spent 15 years not winning after that.

But what I'm really looking for is behind the scenes, behind the scenes of the scenes, what was it like to finally get, how we see players celebrating it? I want to know unvarnished, when Jim Dolan is asking for all these things, when Jeffrey Loria is experiencing what it's like, what is it actually like? You start meeting the next day about the next year.

We had a meeting the day of the parade to start talking about the roster for 04. That's the truth. That's the grind of the championship season. Players will take some time off and then get ready. It's summer league starting soon. The draft, like it's the calendar goes on. See, he's not telling the truth.

There was a real big celebration. There was an exhale. There was a lot of fun. And maybe you did have a meeting the next day. But that night, you guys didn't just go home and go to bed and sleep. Like, there was a relief and celebration and joy that you refused to tell us about. But that's fine. You don't want to tell us what we did.

But don't lie to us. You were at the hotel. No, the night we won in New York with Jack McKeon, who was the manager, the GM, we were in our bathrobes, our hotel bathrobes at the Hyatt. And we were watching Sports Center on Loop. that's what we did because we were the lead of SportsCenter and it was all about the win and we were there and we were drinking and together

watching SportsCenter on Loop that is what we did the night of Game 6 October 25th of 03 it's funny you should mention that though I do know on a side note four different players with some guests of ours there was some stuff going on at 4 a.m. so players did find good stuff at 4 a.m. I would fucking hope so.

There was, if you talk to Mr. Beckett and the like, there was activity the night after the World Series. So I went to game four of the best game in professional basketball history. I was at that game, and I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to bring my wife or not. And I'm so happy that she came because after that night, I mean, after that game, like, it's a must, and I ain't even play. It's a must. That experience, you think I'm just going to lay down and go to bed after a game like that?

I went to that game too. Nobody deserves to, like, go home and just like, all right, back to sleep. No, that man deserves a nightcap. Like, you got to remember that night forever. I didn't break a sweat until we got back to the room. You think OGN and Novi just settled for the tip that night? I would assume he went right to sleep. I hate, I hate.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out. Metal Arc Media Production. And I'll talk to you next time.