The Bill Simmons Podcast - Ep. 189: Steve Ballmer on Owning an NBA Franchise

Episode Date: March 17, 2017

HBO and The Ringer's Bill Simmons is joined by Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer to discuss technology's impact of viewing habits (6:00), the Clippers' need for a championship (12:00), the potential of a new Clippers arena (24:30), the Seattle expansion for the NBA (35:00), the NBA boardroom (42:00), understanding the salary cap (54:00), the future of this Clippers core (1:02:00), and the Microsoft scouting report (1:12:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the BS Podcast with Steve Ballmer is brought to you by SeatGeek. That's our presenting sponsor since 1988. Find the best tickets for sporting events, music, wrestling, opera, March Madness, you name it. I've had SeatGeek on my phone for two years. It's by far the easiest way I've found to shop for the best tickets thanks to their revolutionary grading system. Buy and sell tickets in just two taps on your phone. Everything, everything is fully guaranteed. Just try it out.

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NMLSConsumeraccess.org number 3030. Once again, quickenloans.com slash Bill Simmons. We're also brought to you by the Ringer NFL Show. That's where you can find Mike Lombardi's new weekly podcast, GM street. It's co-hosted by my boy, Tate Frazier, who happens to be producing this podcast.

It is excellent. I highly recommend it. They even created a little mini news cycle around Lombardi's belief in this week's podcast, that the Seahawks would be open to training Richard Sherman to create cap space. If you like Mike Lombardi on this podcast, you will love hearing him on the Ringer NFL show. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts.

I think we're doing those once a week. Highly recommend it. Speaking of the Ringer, I posted a column today on what's promising to be one of the most dramatic NBA lotteries of all time. Check it out on thRinger.com. I enjoyed this one. It was a fun one to write. Lastly, we have Clippers owner Steve Ballmer coming.

We taped this on Wednesday because that was the day he was here and that was the day we could do it. And right after that, the Clippers went on a two-game losing swoon and showed signs of having their season legitimately unraveling. And J.J. Redick even said after the game, I don't know what to make of this team anymore.

So we didn't get to talk about that, but this was a really good podcast. I enjoyed it. He's something else. We dove into everything you would ever want to know about owning an NBA franchise. Hopefully it doesn't get too NBA nerdy, but I really enjoyed it. I think this was only the second owner I've ever had on a podcast. The first one was Mark Cuban back in my ESPN days,

but this was really good. I left some meat on the bone for Steve to come back and talk about the tech industry and stuff like that. This was NBA only. Anyway, that's coming up right now. Here it is pearl jam first so All right, we are in the office. Steve Ballmer, owner of the Clippers. You don't live in California, though.

You live in Washington, right? Yeah, I live just outside Seattle. Gorgeous place. Down here, though, very, very, very frequently. You come to every home game? Pretty much. My wife's absconding with the tickets for two games a week from now, so I guess I'll be at 38, 39 games this year.

And every time you go to Washington, LA, you just hop on a plane? Yeah. Which I assume you own, you own the plane. Yeah, no, I come down. Zoom in. Some nights I stay over, some nights I go home the same night, often, back in my bed, 1.30 that night. I have a high schooler who graduates this year, probably be able to take a little easier

coming down back to LA, be down here a little bit more once he graduates. So I bet there's been a couple of those plane rides have been very quiet and surly after a tough loss or something, right? I'm frequently doing that by myself which is probably a good thing for whoever might accompany otherwise you paid two billion for the clippers everyone thought it was a crazy price i was on tv back then i was i think that you're only defender for the price i thought i thought it should have been at least two billion just the way the league was going and the media rights and um you're

basically buying i i was comparing it to beachfront property there's 30 houses on the beach and you bought one of the 30 houses and you bought the one of the ones that was in la the second biggest market um chance to build your own arena potentially someday all that stuff and now i think people understand like that was actually a good purchase. People thought you overpaid. You probably underpaid. Well, it's kind of a funny thing. Why are the prices of sports franchises up? Because I paid $2 billion for the Clippers.

There aren't that many transactions. There just aren't many sales. So in a sense, value is determined when something sells. And it's not just that LA's beachfront, but how do I say this in the right way? If you look at potential buyers from outside the US, people want to come to LA. They want to go to Miami. They want to go to New York. That makes the price of franchises in those places even worth more than the other 30, if you will, franchises around. So I feel very comfortable. I'm not planning on selling the team anyway, so that makes life even simpler for me.

I'm 60, almost 61. Hopefully 40 years from now, I'll be still coming down for games, but that'll not be up to me whether I've still got it when I'm 100. Well, we should mention that was three years ago. There hasn't been an NBA team for sale since, and that was- No, no, no. One. Or sold. One.

Which one? The Hawks. The Hawks sold, and that was through another set of tumult with ownership. Yeah. Yeah. I don't feel like that was an intentional sale. Nope, nor was the Clippers. Yeah. I don't feel like that was an intentional sale. Nope, nor was the Clippers. No.

So you can kind of say there hasn't, the only intentional sale in the last three plus years was the Milwaukee Bucks. Yes. And in 2010, before the lockout and when people were really worried about the economics because of the attendance, we didn't have any idea what the streaming

was going to look like at that point. And I remember I wrote a column in 2010, think about like this is bad this is there's seven eight teams that could be had right now you look at what the sixers guys paid i think they paid like maybe 280 i think it was under three you know and and um almost like did the league a favor by stepping in i don't think they had a lot of bidders and now it's just completely flipped what do you think the biggest reason is other than the personalities of the players and the star power and all that to me it's the streaming and the possibility of all these different countries that can stream games 10 years from

now what do you think it is i get three things i think it's the excitement in the game, for sure. I think it is the possibility for new revenue streams streaming overseas. I think of streaming as a net growth opportunity, although some people get scared with the TV revenues going away over some period of time. And the last thing, which is probably important to note, is as society in general gets wealthier, particularly the people who are fortunate enough to make big fortunes, guess what? The price of teams are going to go up. Yeah. Because the people who can buy beachfront have more. So to the degree that you have these big fortunes, and I would say private equity. If you look at the number of owners who came out of the private equity or hedge fund business, the tech business going up. I mean, there's a lot of owners who've been in the game

for a long time, but as teams sell, that tends to be where they're going. Take a look at Sacramento, tech industry. Clips, tech industry. Philadelphia, hedge fund business. Atlanta, hedge fund business. Milwaukee, hedge fund business. Just as a reminder, it's a combination of the excitement of the game, the revenue opportunities, and what the buyers can pay. And what's interesting is nobody factors that in when they talk about why somebody wants to buy a team.

Like the Forbes list drives me crazy. Forbes is like, here's the valuation. It's like you can't put a price on what it's like to own a basketball team in L.A., especially if you're a rich guy and you have enough money to do basically whatever you want. You're going to buy a house. You buy a second house. You buy some cars. You might have your own plane. But ultimately, like owning your own team, I'm sure these last three years have been really just fun for you as a human being.

Like you're the guy, you walk in, you have your seats behind the basket. And I don't know, I would just imagine it's exhilarating. It's super fun. I'm not going to deny it. It is a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun in a lot of different ways the notion of which I can't say like childhood

dream who has a childhood dream that they were able to afford a basketball team not me but all of a sudden wow you get to think with in our case Doc and Lawrence Frank okay where do we go what's the team going to look like three, five years from now? You get to think about that.

You get to hear from, in our case, Doc. What's the dynamic? What's going on inside with the chemistry of the team? What's good? What's bad? What's ugly? The business. Hey, I love the business side.

Also quite interesting. Ticket pricing is a real complicated thing. I love technology. I think technology will change the viewing experience for the game. That's super fun for me. We have now seven years left on our lease, and we've got to think about do we stay in our current home? Do we look at a new home?

But that's a kind of once-in generation opportunity for an owner arena who are you kidding well i i haven't made that decision but i'm glad you have bill come on you're building a new one i would bet anything that you're building a new arena why here's the thing i've had quipper season they're expensive these arena things they're not cheap and this is california there's no public money in this game listen Listen, I've had season tickets since 2004. You get all the worst dates. Sunday night Oscars? Oh, a Clippers home game.

No, we're the third tenant in the building. The way it works, it's even in the lease. It's in the lease. We're the third tenant. I get that. I would never do another lease. We're the third tenant. You can't.

It makes it harder to win ballgames because not only are we playing on nights when it's harder to bring people into the building. We play Monday nights. Monday night football is our time. But also, it means we have less flexibility in the schedule. It means it's tougher for us to get our dates in, which makes our travel schedule. Everything's a little harder. So I wouldn't do it like we do it today.

In the future, I'd look for, let me call it scheduling parity with the other guys in the building. I'm not complaining because I love having tickets for an NBA team. It was one of the reasons, like I'm from Boston, we'd sell season tickets forever. Got to LA as soon as I had enough time, my schedule got corporate tickets for the other team because at that point they were terrible. But it's amazing. I mean, you can count on like home games going head to head with round one and round two of the NFL playoffs.

That's a lot. Hey, here's a 12 o'clock Saturday game against the AFC championship game. The Oscars. It's just left and right. There are all these scheduling things that uh that you can just tell they're like the the ugly stepbrother of the la staple center scene so we're the guys who signed the lease third we get the we get the smallest locker room that that's gonna be in the lease and you know we need to fix some things up that was one of the smart things that doc did was cover up the

laker stuff and put Clippers people there. So it felt more like a thing. But like I said, I'm in Section 101 where it's basically all 1984. They call them the 84s. It's people that when they moved from San Diego to L.A. in 84. Yeah. These people are the best. And they've kept them for the most part.

And it's real diehard fans um on the other hand there's been this new wave of quipper fans that kind of came in since since blake and chris showed up and it's interesting the dichotomy between those two fan bases like the one of them like almost can't believe the team's good and they and they don't want to take it for granted and then the new fan base is like we should be better like they're yelling at the refs and all that stuff. It's a fascinating mix. What was your perception of Clipper fans as you started going to these games? Yeah, the number one thing that surprised me, and I've done some sort of Clipper season ticket holder events and stuff like that, is how long a lot of the fans, as you were just saying, have owned tickets.

Yeah. I mean, I love the notion that we've got this kind of die-hard, I say it in business, you just have to be tenacious. You've got to keep coming and coming and coming and coming at things. Heck, we've got fans like that. They've been patient and

long-term. And I sort of feel like, oh, couldn't we give them what they want here? But they're patient. Not that much. The patience is waning a tiny bit. I feel like, oh, couldn't we get them what they want here? But they're patient. Yeah. The newer fans. Not that much. The patience is waning a tiny bit.

Look, if their patience wanes, if patience doesn't wane a little bit, that's not good. I want people who are demanding good performance. I mean, winning a championship is a big deal. Yeah. The number of teams who've won championships ever is small. On the other hand, I'm not going to stop and I'm going to push. I'll do anything

we can in order to give ourselves a chance to win. So I'm glad there'll be fans pushing us. The newer fans, it's interesting for you to say, hey look, they're more on the refs. They expect more. I think it's the old fans who expect more. But the newer fans are just used to a high-level performance.

And so, in a sense, they're just looking at the difference from where they started. And, you know, when you're winning 55 games plus a year, they're saying, okay, where's the 60? Where's the third round of the playoffs? Where, where, where, where, where? Yeah. The one thing that I've noticed the last couple years, and it's totally because of the secondary market,

is you'll see when there's five or six in the most, but you'll see it Saturday night at the Cleveland game. There's a lot of fans of the other team. There's really no way to stop it because, you know, season tickets are expensive. Nobody goes to 41 games anymore i think that's the thing that's changed the most about being a sports fan over the last 20 years people now go to 10 to 15 and they sell their tickets and you see with the warriors you're gonna see the calves and it's not just the clippers but i know you're a competitive guy i know you're like

a this is your team kind of guy when you see 7,000 fans of the other team, you must go crazy. Oh, it just drives me nuts. It really drives me nuts. It's amongst the things that actually make me craziest. And when I see somebody who's down on the floor. Yeah. There was a guy two and three seats down from me wearing a flipping blue and gold, blue and yellow, whatever the hell I'm supposed to say.

Oh, yeah, you knew who it was. I couldn't even speak the words. But I was like, what the heck? I went to the guys who owned the seats and said, don't, please, don't ever do that again. Please, what are you thinking? So it does drive me crazy. I mean, look, there are ideas on how to do this differently. Let's talk about them.

Okay. And I'm not saying we're going to do them. I'll just tell you. If you look at what they do in soccer in Europe, to the best of my understanding, you first have to join the club. Then you buy your seat. What do you mean join the club? You're part of the football club.

Remember they call them, you know, they're all called football clubs. They're clubs. You got to pay a club membership and then buy a ticket. Now, do I like the idea that everybody who comes to our games might have to pay someday a membership fee to join the club? And you can join the club and not buy season tickets. But when you want tickets, you can get them and you can come to the game because you can show you're a member of the club and you bought a ticket. Now, if you had to do both of those, the front runners who only come to see their visiting team, blah, blah, blah, they'd have to buy a club membership.

That might scare them off a little bit for coming into our building. I'm not sure we're going to do it. Not saying anything. But I'm looking and thinking this stuff I'm not sure we're going to do it. Not saying anything. But I'm looking and thinking this stuff through, particularly if we're going to do a new arena. In the current arena, there wouldn't be any way to do it. The ticketing systems wouldn't support it. But we're studying what they do abroad

and whether there are any clever ideas from other places that would let you pull something like that off. So you could study music, too. Like Pearl Jam created a club, and their members get first chance at tickets and things like that off. So you could study music too, like Pearl Jam. Pearl Jam created a club and their members get first chance at tickets and things like that. Well, you can even say you can't come into the arena unless you can both say you bought a ticket and you're a member of the club. Right.

You have to have done both. And guess what? How many Warrior fans living in L.A. are going to want to join the Clipper Club first? Right. You can't come unless you join the club and you buy your ticket. Even if you buy it on the secondary market, you'd still have to prove you're a member of the club.

Now, I don't want to scare people off. This is a fantasy in my mind. You know, our season ticket holders are just fine. I don't think it's that much of a fantasy. I think it's doable. Well, right now it's fantasy because we couldn't even execute it. And we'd have to decide how much would it screw up ticket revenue because, as you said, people buy season tickets and they come in with an expectation that they can sell off games they don't want. I hate personalized seat licenses, personal seat licenses.

I just think it's extortion. But this, what you're describing is actually you're getting stuff out of it. There's an obligation on the fan. And you guys, I would assume, would have the protection, like if somebody who's sitting courtside sold their seats to a Cavs fan on Saturday night, you'd be like, all right, you're going to do that? Then we're going to take your seats back. I'm not sure we'd do that. But what I probably would say, if you want to sell your seat, you better.

Not sell to the Cavs fans? No, those people would have to prove that they're part of the Clipper Club before they get in. I like this. It's almost like... No, if you're a Cavs fan, I'm not sure you want to pay a membership fee of some size to join Club Clipper in order to come in. I mean, I don't know if this all works, but I'm hearing and we're studying a little bit

what they do with these football clubs in Europe. You don't see, you see mostly loyal fans in soccer games in Europe, football games, whatever. In the U.S., football's a little different because there's only 16 games. People don't put their tickets up as much, et cetera. So it's a little different in football. Basketball and baseball, those are the two tough ones. A lot of games. Too many. And hockey too. And hockey too. Although, I don't know, ones. A lot of games. And hockey, too. And hockey, too. Although, I don't know, when I've been in to watch the Kings just one time, sure didn't feel like you had any fans at all for the opponent.

And this is more of an L.A. problem. You go to Oklahoma City, you don't have a lot of people who moved in from L.A. rooting for the Clippers playing the Thunder back in Oklahoma City. The soccer, that's an interesting idea to study what's actually working with fan unanimity.

Yeah, that's right. We'll study and see if there's ideas. What do you think the future of season tickets is? Because it's, I've noticed it this year more than ever because especially like

Kings tickets, I've had for six years. In the last couple years, because my kids have have gotten older sometimes last second it's like oh crap we can't go we used to just put them on stub hub or give them away something like that but on stub hub they would go and now it seems like the people who buy secondary market tickets they wait because they know there's this late rush of four five six o'clock people that can't go and they can get in basically to the games for half price. What does that mean for the future of tickets? Well, I think probably the best way for me to say it is technology gives us unique challenges

and it gives us unique opportunities. We're testing this thing this year we call seat bid, where we save some seats that people can put up for an auction-type marketplace. And that means for some games, you're going to make a whole lot more money. In some games, we will make a whole lot less money. If the concept works, over time, what you'd want to do is have a controlled marketplace that might go to an auction bid system. Today, tickets go everywhere. The Warriors have come down kind of hard on this.

They basically say, if you don't sell your tickets back to us and let us sell them, we cannot guarantee you, ticket holder, that you didn't buy a counterfeit ticket. So you better watch out. Wow. Now, they tried a period to just ban it. You could only resell your tickets, I think, back through the Warriors, if I remember right. It's a reasonable thing to do. In many businesses, people control their distribution.

They don't let it go hither and yon. Apple doesn't let you buy an iPhone wherever you want to buy them. You buy them at the AT&T or Verizon store, you buy them in the Apple store or the Best Buy store. They don't let somebody go into Best Buy, buy a bunch, and then sell them out of the back of their closet. But that's kind of what we do with season tickets these days. My friend Nathan Hubbard, who used to run Ticketmaster and Lab Nation and then went to Twitter and is still heavily involved in the whole ticket side, he doesn't understand why sports tickets don't work the same way like an airplane ticket would. Or why there's not more of a trail of who has the ticket? Should this be a more complicated system for reasons of security of the fans, for reasons of the team just once they sell a ticket, it just goes out

into the wilderness and they don't know what happens to it? What else could we do? Well, I think some of the ideas that your buddy talked about are very interesting. Originally, I think with baseball, I mean, I don't know. I'm making everything up I'm about to say here. But you think back to the old days, there was no technology to let you do this. Yeah.

And there were a ton of baseball games. And you just walked to the ballpark. There were always open seats. And it was a little more like a movie theater. If we were sitting here and you say, let's do this at the movie theater, we'd all say, oh, come on, that's a crazy idea. Why do we need to track and monitor?

And sports tickets are someplace between a movie theater slash an old baseball park and an airline ticket. And getting that balance right, I think that is one of the things that the owners of the league are going to have to think through for the future. Let's take a quick break to talk about SimpliSafe. Just a couple years ago, if you wanted to protect your family, you had to spend a lot of money on a lot of complicated products. And what's worse than that? You'd be forced into a long-term contract protecting your family with a tangled mess of wires, buttons, and levers.

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Back to Clippers owner, Steve Ballmer. You don't have to confirm or deny any of this, but living out here, knowing people, I've heard rumors about you were looking on the west side for an arena. You were maybe going to be involved with the Cronky thing in Inglewood. You're looking at downtown LA, the convention center, and then the soccer stadium went.

What is the ideal size of an NBA arena for you if you're building one from scratch? Did you study the Sacramento one? Have you looked at that? Because I think that's the best one anyone's built so far. From, well, you seem like you disagree. There's multiple ways to think about an arena. Okay.

Let me start there. Location's obviously important. You can think about amenities and amenities for the fans, luxury areas that you can sell at a premium price. The more money you make, the more money you have to reinvest back in the business. So that's all good. You can think about sort of comfort and socialization during the game. But you can also think about that hardcore fan experience where you want it bumping and thumping.

And you do things differently if you optimize around that than if you optimize. I think Sacramento, I haven't visited, but I think it has a lot of open kind of bar stand around space, which is going to give you a different basketball watching experience than you would get, say, and I'll use Golden State as an example, or Portland. Everything's tight. Boom, boom, boom. It's pulsing. And it's partly because you don't have a lot of these city around chatty areas.

It's about the basketball. So hitting that blend, you got to decide what your design point is. In terms of size, I think it's probably fair to say we want to make sure we have enough space for somebody to buy an affordable ticket. And I think everybody's got to acknowledge that a small percentage of people will pay the lion's share of the revenue of people coming into the building. So we want to get a good balance of intimacy, enough affordable tickets. I mean, if you take a look at Staples, we're at, what, 19,400 seats all in, and it's a very large physical space for 19,400 seats. I think it's too big for basketball. I think it's too big for basketball.

I think it's very tough for basketball. I mean, we in the Lakers do it, and it's a beautiful building. And it doesn't mean we'd even move because it is a beautiful building. On the other hand, if you're trying to create that intimate basketball pump and thump feel, partly just because of the height of the roof and other things, it's hard to do certain things. So you don't want to be huge. You could have a lot smaller 19,000-seat arena than you have today,

or you could say 18,000, 19,000. You can do sort of 18,000 probably to 19,000, 19,500 and still get, I think, plenty of affordable seats. Or you could go 14. You could goose the supply and demand and make it impossible to get in, make it like the hottest ticket in town, and then you have less parking, you have less crowd coming in and out. Yeah, I think then what you'd wind up is very little in the way of affordability,

which would be important to me. I also think there are league rules on minimum sizes of arenas and that kind of thing. That doesn't surprise me. Yeah, I bet Stern stuck that one in before he left. Yeah, I mean, it kind of makes sense. The players are our partners. Players get, call it half of all revenue. And the truth of the matter is, then owners need to uphold their end of the bargain and generate enough revenue. And could you generate more revenue with a 14,000 seat arena? The most revenue you could generate is if you loaded revenue with a 14,000 seat arena?

The most revenue you could generate is if you loaded it with suites, right? I mean, if you're really trying to be selfish. I don't know. You got to sell them. Yeah. Could a single team sell all the suites that are in Staples today? Probably not. It's a corporate entertaining product. And because you get a King's ticket and a Laker ticket and a Clipper ticket, maybe you can pull that off. I think if you were to do it differently, you would not have probably as many suites, but you would have private areas for people who wanted to own them, rent them, that you could get to excessively off the court. People talk about these bunkers off the court. And I think

there's some opportunities. You go to Houston, they have private dining rooms that basically you rent for the season. And you can have dinner there. You can sort of leave the court, go to your little room if you want to at halftime. There are a lot of ways to get some of the advantages of suites without having the space, et cetera, that they might take up. The Clipper fans were tortured by Sterling. I mean, I don't need to tell you that, but it was just an amazing experience watching.

I'm a Celtics fan, but became attached to the Clipper fans a little bit, and they had this owner that was a wild card. He didn't spend money. Guys, the Clipper way was the the guy they would have a lottery pick either the guy would flame out sometimes he would make sometimes he'd make it like lamar and then he just leaves and that's what they were used to and then on top of it horrible scandal leads to him having to sell the team you come in you must have felt like the new

boyfriend after following like the worst boyfriend ever that everyone's been so happy like oh my god it's it's it's an owner who's actually going to care about us did you feel that i did i mean in a way i would say there's a lot of responsibility because things were messy and people were frustrated and in a lot of ways i could say it was kind of a low bar. Yeah. And the bar keeps – the bar's going to go up every year. I mean, someday the whole Sterling thing will be well in the past. And then people will say, okay, well, what are you doing for me now?

Where's that championship? I want that. Yeah. And I think we're – I think we're at that point. I think we're transitioning. I think we're here. I think we're here. I agree with that 100%.

Great. I got over the lowest bar in the world. Now let's see what you can do. People don't remember Sterling anywhere. It's like, where's our finals? We're ready. Exactly. And frankly, remember, I wasn't here in the Sterling days.

Right. So I don't even really know what all that was like. It's all hearsay to me. It was something. I believe it. It was really something. But you remember. It was amazing.

I grew up in Detroit at a time when the teams were not great, but I stayed a Detroit fan for many, many years. Yeah. A lot of good titles. You and C-Web won the title together, right? Oh, no, no. But you went to C-Web's high school, right? Same high school.

I guess C-Web went to your high school. He came after me. Detroit Country Day. Yeah, we had three NBA guys out of my high school. Yeah. Weber, Shane Battier, Ray McCollum. Ray McCollum, okay. Currently kicking around the ring.

He's a Country Day boy as well. Nice. So, but. So you're a Pistons fan, and then you became attached to Seattle. Pistons and a Sonic fan, exactly. And we had good teams. Detroit did well. Sonics got to the finals, whatever that would have been, 96.

Were you an owner with the Sonics? No, I was never a part owner. Never had any ownership in Sonics. I mean, look, two things. I had a full-time job. I would say you had a full-time job. I had a full-time job. You were say you had a full-time job. I had a full-time job. You were CEO of a quadrillion-dollar company, Microsoft.

Is it really all that important to be a minority owner and have no real influence? No. Not for me. You know this. Being a minority owner is the fool's gold purchase. It's great. You're basically buying season tickets. You're on a board, but you don't really have a full say.

The majority owner is the guy that makes the decisions. We're on a podcast, so don't really have a full say that the majority owner is the guy that makes the decisions we're on a podcast so people can't see me hunting my shoulders and sort of nodding at a set but anyway so everyone who listens to this podcast or has ever read me knows that i took the sonics thing really personally i just as a basketball fan and i grew up as a kid in the 70s i really enjoyed the gust of DJ teams and just feel in general that if you win a title you should never lose your team I didn't like the circumstances that it went down uh Schultz selling to a group that clearly was positioned to sell to steal them and bring them Oklahoma City the Oklahoma City arena isn't really any better or

worse than the arena they left in Seattle you've have Seattle that, as you know, is, along with the Bay Area, the two biggest booming areas that we've had in America in the last 20 years. There's a ton of money there. There's basketball history. There's fans. It's amazing to me they don't have a team. I'm sure it was amazing to you because you got in the group that tried to bring it back.

How does Seattle not have a team? It's 2017. Well, let me first say i i love owning the clippers the clippers will always be in la but i feel like i i was part of screwing things up i had a chance to step forward i stepped forward too late what so you're talking what uh this is whatever it was the okc group stepped in yeah i mean at that time i wouldn't even have thought about it. A full-time job, what am I doing? Yeah, I remember you were in a group, right? Well, that comes second. Okay.

That comes second. So Howard sells the team, and then there's this move, can we build an arena? And yeah, there were four of us who stepped up, not just by the basketball team, but said, hey, we'd help put money into an arena. Yeah. My neighbor, Jim Senegal, who started Costco, me, a guy named John Stanton, who started Voice Dream, which became T-Mobile. He owns the Mariners now.

And it was still too little, too late. And that was just all about the arena at that stage. You know, my kids are younger and let's just say, I don't think it's easy to be a kid of an owner. I'll just tell you that. High school kid, your dad's an owner. You get busted at school and all that stuff. So I kind of stayed away from it. And you were also super-duper-duper.

This is like the height of when you were CEO of Microsoft. So I have no time. But I feel bad because I was in a position to step in. And then, God, really? You mean it really is going to leave town? Yeah. Well, shoot, that happened. And then we took our run at Sacramento.

Now, that's a little different. I'm still running Microsoft, but Chris Hansen leads the group, but I'm all in. And Chris Hansen, I got to know his bit and him a tiny bit, but he seemed like a genuine guy whose intentions were 100 good yeah no he's he absolutely right intention cared he went out and bought the real estate yeah heck that's basically what cronky did right yeah he buys the real estate and he figures all right now but cronky owned a team i know he owned the team but i mean you buy the real estate that's usually a sign you think you have a good chance or Right. But there's a weird chicken and an egg thing. Seriously, to get a team back to Seattle?

Yeah. Okay, do you build an arena and hope you get a team? Too expensive. Yeah. It's a billion dollar bet. Yeah. They may have done that at OKC, but do you do that? No.

Do you buy a team and tell the city where you bought, yeah, we're moving it. Or do you buy a team, tell the city where you bought, we're working hard to keep it there. But do you have a backup plan in your own hometown? See, I couldn't understand even how the game theory would work these days. The Sacramento thing was as good a situation it was going to get. Chris had bought some land, had a plan for an arena, SAC was for sale. Okay, it didn't work out.

I mean, it's bad for the city of Seattle. And people in Seattle ask me, will Seattle get a team again? I say, absolutely. I think it happens in the next four years. Do you know when? And I say, absolutely. I have no idea. I think next four years.

Do you? Yeah. What do you think? You think expansion happens? Yeah, I, I have no idea. I think next four years. Do you? Yeah. What do you think? You think expansion happens? Yeah, I think the league can expand. I don't know. I mean, that's one we've never talked about, at least at the owners' meetings,

but it doesn't mean the league's not thinking about it. But without expansion, it's wild because you'd have to find a team that's at the end of their lease for sale in a market that might be iffy in terms of revenue from basketball. You know, there aren't that many of them. And Sacramento's quiesced nicely. Milwaukee is, you know, quiesced nicely in Milwaukee. Although that was dicey for a split second when that arena was up. That was dicey for a split second. I mean, look, I actually looked at Milwaukee.

I just retired. I went to see Adam Silver, and I said, I still really want to buy a team. He said, well, you can't buy a team in the city and hope to bring it to Seattle. You're going to have to work to keep it where it is. And I said, does that mean I should go look at Milwaukee? Because it was for sale at the time. He said, yeah, if you're interested, go look at Milwaukee. I flew to Milwaukee to keep it where it is. And I said, does that mean I should go look at Milwaukee? Because it was for sale at the time.

He said, yeah, if you're interested, go look at Milwaukee. I flew to Milwaukee for a day. I drove the suburbs. I looked at the city. I went to a game. And the owner at the time, Senator Cole, he had no interest in selling to me because I'm moving to Seattle banner on my head. Right. So that one didn't work out. And then I was just the luck of all luck I love LA the Clippers are coming through

this process uh I was pretty committed to getting the team let's just put it that way my fear is that I think they're going to get an expansion team my fear is that they're just going to use Seattle as the extortion city the same way the NFLfl used la for 20 years and say hey i mean they did it to milwaukee yeah listen you got to build that arena you got to help out if you don't seattle's right there and then all of a sudden that arena gets built and you're gonna have other cities coming up in the same predicament yeah without expansion without expansion you're right uh you know. Seattle's sitting there. Seattle's the largest market in the United States without a basketball team. It's kind of insane that they don't have a team.

When you think about you have Microsoft and Amazon there. It's like LA not having a football team for a long time. It may not be as nuts as that, but it's pretty nuts. I mean, Bezos could just say, all right, what's the price tag for an expansion team? And I'm going to build the Amazon dome or whatever, the Amazon arena or whatever. And he just builds this 20. And all of a sudden, you look at what Kroenke did. You've got to love basketball, though, to do that.

So he doesn't like it. I don't know. I'm silent on the topic. I have no idea. I love basketball. I don't know what Jeff thinks about basketball, actually. Because Kroenke was smart. Kroenke had the topic. I have no idea. I love basketball. I don't know what Jeff thinks about basketball actually. Because Kroenke was smart. Kroenke had the team. He bought the land.

When he bought the land, the amount of money he spent, I don't know. If you made the dotted line, it's like, oh, he can see where this is going. Now he's going to own the second biggest team in the league from a market standpoint. He is a monopoly in the city.

There's no, you know, everybody has to basically go through him to play there. If there's a second team, there's still a tenant, much like you are right now. Yep. And he's going to have Super Bowls. He's the epicenter of the NFL, stuff like that. Why couldn't an arena that you built

be the NFL version, be the NBA version of that? I mean, it really could, right? Could be, I guess. It could be kind of the West Coast epicenter if you did it. Yeah, could be. I mean, the most important thing right now is for us to take a look, think about the arena, see what AEG really wants to do with Staples and us as a tenant.

When's your lease end? 2024. This is not minute by minute, but if you really want to build an arena, there's a permitting process. You've got to get the land. We don't have that. You've got to go through a permitting process. You've got to go through a real serious negotiation with the current landlord because it's not a casual thing to say, hey, let's go build a billion-dollar or whatever it would cost building. So you could say seven years out is early, and you could say seven years out is early and you could say seven years out is by

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is the difference in the ownerships and the people actually on the teams. The NFL is a lot of old money. It's a lot of legacy money. It's a lot of people that built businesses and had them for decades and kind of old school America. And the NBA is the complete opposite. You were talking before, it's hedge funds tech I'm gonna say maybe 16 17 18 people are kind of new money owners what's it like in those board of directors meetings I mean you have some of the smartest 21st century businessmen in the in the

whole country and they're all in the same room but you also have a lot of ego too you're right you're right about everything you just characterized. Everybody's got the best new idea. And thank goodness for Adam Silver. You've got a guy who really is wise. He listens well. He knows his job is to sort of take the best for the owners and then set a course for the league. The league office is kind of funny.

The owners own the league as well. Owners are officially Adam's boss. The league office is kind of funny, right? The owners own the league as well. Owners are officially Adam's boss. The board is. And yet, in a healthy sense, and we're business partners. We collectively owe half of our revenue to the players. We need to worry about competitive parity or you can't sell tickets. On the other hand, we're competitors. And as competitors, it's hard for me to look at a guy and say, oh, you're't sell tickets. On the other hand, we're competitors. And as competitors,

it's hard for me to look at a guy and say, oh, you're my business partner. But heck, I can't completely trust you because we have different interests. And Adam gets to sort of put that in the soup, mix it all together. And I think he does a fantastic job of taking the best ideas and synthesizing them out to something that makes sense for the whole league. Does it tick you off that everybody, it's basically the revenue sharing is really good. It wasn't always, but it's been good lately compared to what it was in the past.

You have a team like Philly that can just be like, we're going to pay as little salary as we possibly can. We're going to stink every year and we're going to get a top five pick. But Steve Ballmer, knock yourself out. Keep paying the $110 million a year. We'll be happy to share some of that revenue with you, and we're going to try to cherry pick the next superstar.

I don't know if that's a great system. Well, it is and it isn't. I mean, I actually think it is a good system as long as it doesn't go too far. Well, let me explain why. I'll just give you an example. I would say that went too far, though. What Philly's doing't go too far. Well, let me explain why. I'll just give you an example. I would say that went too far, though. What Philly's doing has gone too far. What Philly's doing is almost independent, though, of revenue sharing

or what they are purported to have done. Yes. Okay. Josh Harris is my partner. I don't know what really happened. Josh Harris is smart. I have his back. But it's almost independent of revenue sharing.

It has more to do with the cap and the way all that stuff works. But let's say the Lakers sign a, call it $200 million a year deal. The players are entitled to $100 million of that. The cap's going to go up. The cap's going to go up by $3 million a year. That essentially added $3 dollars of cost to Memphis. Memphis didn't get any of that revenue. The Lakers got all that revenue, and all of a sudden, the Memphis guys got three million dollars more cost and no more revenue. Some sharing to help

with that is completely appropriate to some level. You go beyond that level, it's not appropriate. You can't take the pressure off of Memphis to do a good job because Lakers got a huge TV contract. So some amount of revenue sharing is appropriate, and when you go beyond a certain point, you're just encouraging what I would call lazy behaviors in certain markets. And so getting that balance right, you don't want to tell a guy, hey, good news, you don't have to sell any tickets, you don't want to tell a guy, hey, good news. You don't have to sell your tickets.

You don't have to have a winning team because you're going to get paid from the big markets. That would be wrong. And I think, right, that is a place where there is balance. That's a place where the owners can get kind of just a little uncomfortable with one another. It's a place where Adam does a great job of, and the league office, of really trying to keep that thing in exactly the right balance.

What's the best idea you've heard in that room that the league couldn't actually do? Or the idea you're most jealous of or something you're like, man, that would be a game changer. It's too bad we can't do that. Well, I think there's an idea I'm very excited about, which we will do with the Clippers. And yet it will be hard for us to realize its full potential without the league eventually

picking it up. I am excited about what you can do with software over the internet to transform the experience for a fan who's not in the arena, whether they're on their phone, they're in their home. Can you, through software-based techniques, change it so that if you want to see the game, let's say, from Chris Paul's perspective, instead of center court, camera, move up and down a little bit. No, I want to be and see the game the way Chris sees the game. Software can actually let that happen.

So Chris Paul would have to wear a helmet cam? No, nothing, nothing. Software can figure it out. If it can't figure it out this year, it'll figure it out in two or three years. I'm a software guy, so yes, I'll exaggerate how quickly it can happen. But it's going to happen.

And you say, okay, but you've got to have the rights. We can do that here, or we can do that in partnership with Fox, because we've been talking about it. But when the big contracts were signed with TNT and ABC, ESPN, that wasn't part of the mix. And the league did the right thing. ESPN did the right thing. Disney did the right thing. Turner, Everybody did the right thing. And yet, I'm still hoping amongst hopes that if we can prove out this technology, we can get it adopted.

Because there are games we don't have rights to even for the Clippers. There are games that are exclusive. And even for those games, even if we get this stuff figured out with Fox, we're not going to have a chance to bring that to people. And nobody did a wrong thing. Everybody did everything right. And yet, I think there's still so much to be figured out with the digital. And other owners have other concepts they're playing with. This 3D thing that Intel does.

VR. VR. There's going to be a lot of things. And the question is, how do you spin that together? And every owner's got good ideas. The league understands the importance of the rights that have been granted and did the right thing. But solving all that, that'll be a thing that will require a lot of creativity and could have a little bit of frustration despite everybody being interested in the right thing happening. Adam always told me that the great thing about Dr. Buss was being in this room, you have all this ego, testosterone,

all these guys who are just used to doing it their own way. And he was like, Dr. Buss would barely say anything, but he would always have the best two points in the meeting. And he was just kind of the sage of the room. Is there somebody like that now, or is it a bunch of people? Because I would imagine Cuban has some opinions. Mark's got a lot of opinions.

Are you on Cuban's corner? He's got a lot of opinions. He's very energetic. Sage is not the word I was going to use for Mark. Fired up, rambunctious, 28 ideas a second. Sage sort of implies a little more contemplative, a little more thoughtful, step back a little bit more.

I would, in some cases, oh, I would say, yeah, Mickey Arison. Oh. I would say Mickey Arison. That's a good guess. I should have guessed that one. I would say Mickey Arison. I might also say Glenn Taylor, who's the board chairman from the Timberwolves. But I absolutely would put Mickey Arison on that list.

You dabbled with the idea of doing a WWE Network type of thing with Clipper Games. And it seems like you're still investigating it. Yeah. What's the biggest obstacle? Well, I mean, look, you can just stream games. Who cares? Yeah. I mean, you can go get Fox Go Today and get our game streamed.

That's not really the issue. But disappearing from cable and forcing people to be like, you can only see our games downloading this app or paying for the subscription is a different. Right. Right. But then you're just substituting one business model for another. The key to me is getting some innovation going. Yeah. So just streaming our games, which you can do on Fox Go

and the business models well-established, probably is not value-add. When you can let people, instead of just watching the game, when you can let them do the kind of stuff I said earlier, I'm going to watch the game today. I'm going to watch the first half and see it like Chris Paul. I'm going to watch the second half and see it like Blake Griffin. Or I'm going to watch this game where I can choose my camera angle.

I can have any seat in the building. I can get instantaneous. Can sit next to you. Can sit next to me. You can get instantaneous feedback. Carolina next to you. Can sit next to me. You can get instantaneous feedback. You hear a lot of grunting and screaming. Yeah. I've seen you during the games.

How much soda do you have before a game? Like 80 ounces? I don't drink, I don't take any caffeine. No caffeine. It's natural caffeine. Zero. Amazing. I got off caffeine two years ago.

So all I have. That's probably a good idea. Like this Perrier here. Some water with fizzies in it to get me to get me stoked look i i i'm into it i've always been into yeah my kids games this isn't like your kids games your kids games oh yeah that's and and and i'm all positive just for the record i don't get on raps that's not my deal but i gotta say i've never seen you at the refs i mean maybe like yeah but not like some of these gotta say i've never seen you at the refs i mean maybe like

yeah but not like some of these other no i mean look you know there's occasionally be a call but basically i i don't believe in it they're doing their best job there's a whole process the you know the league uses to pick the good refs from the bad refs you know i don't think it's going to help our team much for me to start yelling at refs. I don't know why that would help. So I'm all positive on that kind of stuff. But other than your kids' games, I'm more invested than even the most invested fan. And I don't just mean financially. It's just sort of like, wow, you know, I know, I know, I know the guys, I know the coaches, I know the trainers. And I was football manager. I was a team manager of a football team when I was at Harvard. Yeah. And yeah, I don't know. I felt I wasn't playing

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you cannot lose alright back to Steve Ballmer how much of your life is just spent with people coming up to you and talking about the Clippers and you're at dinner and they bring it up and you're at a party and they bring it up and you're at the mall and they bring it up maybe you don't go to up and you're at a party and they bring it up and you're at the mall and they bring it up. Maybe you don't go to a mall.

I don't know. Do they even have malls anymore? You're at the Grove walking around. Yeah, we're mall guys. Okay, good. Our family's mall. Especially when we had our kids younger. Nowadays, a little less mall people, but I still like to go to a Microsoft store.

I guess you, but you're not in LA that much, so you probably don't feel it as much as you did if you were. I don't know what you mean I'm not in LA. Yeah, I'm not, I don't live here. Yeah. On the other hand, you know, I'm down here for a day and a half today. I'm back down.

We have some stuff we do down here on the civic and philanthropic front that has nothing to do with Clippers. So, you know, I'm down a reasonable amount. But it is different. When I go to the mall in Seattle, yeah, I might, you know, people say, yeah, go Clippers.

But people aren't pounding on me. Hey, why didn't you do this? You should have done this at the trade deadline. I'm not getting that. I'm just going, go Clippers. Because, you know, you're not dealing with your hometown, your hometown guys. Now, when I'm here, a lot of what I'm doing is, you know, stuff, it's business, it's work. Even if it's philanthropic or civic, that's a professional aspect to it. And when you go to the arena, what do you got? You got guys who want more, but they're kind of invested. Yeah, they're supportive.

So I don't get what I'd call the fan hammering that I probably would get if I lived here and, you know, was going down to, going down to buy bagels in the morning. Hey, what did you do? Why didn't you guys win the game last night? You're trading Blake? What's going on? Are you going to trade him?

You're entering your... Some of the players' families will go even crazier. Oh, seriously? Why aren't our guys playing defense? I've got that from one of the players' family members recently. You're entering, you're getting close to year four. This will be your fourth year owning the team. Yeah, this is my third season wrapping up, exactly. What were you bad at in year one? What do you look back at and go, oh man, I can't believe I did that. God, I sucked at this. Like, what were you bad at? Yeah, year one, I was good at being a newbie.

Not good at much of anything else. What does that mean? It means that I was still new to understanding the business side. Yeah. I was clueless in really understanding the way the cap works. Clueless in that. Did you make any, I can't remember, did you make a? Yeah, we made one big trade my first year.

That was the deal that got us Austin Rivers. That was my first. No, I can't tell you I understood it much. I'm sitting there at a party before the national championship football game. My wife went to Oregon. Oregon's playing Ohio State in a game. Yeah, I think that's my first year. Yeah, first year of ownership.

And, you know, I'm just okay. And the only reason I got involved in that is, shoot, you know, we're trading for Coach's son. Yeah, that's a little weird. I better be part of that. I feel like I have to have his back on that. So first year, I'm bad at everything. Let's just say I'm bad at everything.

I don't know how to communicate with the team. I'm not sure what's too much, what's too little. I'm not trying to be invasive. I know the whole story of Sterling. By the second year, I kind of get it. It's part of the owner's job to really pump guys up when they do something right. So I find a way to do that my second year. I start finding ways to appropriately connect.

You know, whether it's texting guys after the game, I show up a little bit before. I have a tradition now, at least in my mind, where I give a little talk at training camp, kind of lessons learned, things I think about. I'm not telling them, yeah, we're going to run more them, yeah, we're going to run more pick and roll this year on the right side. I'm not doing that.

So I think I got that down. Still really participating in a meaningful way with guys on how to shape the roster. And people think shaping the roster has something to do with picking player A versus player B. It does. It does. But Doc understands that, and Lawrence understands that. What I can understand is the way the cap actually works and how you map.

It's like a math puzzle. It's a big math jigsaw puzzle. You're planning five years of the team not one yeah and you got to think okay you know what are we going to have for picks what are we going to have for cap space whatever the guys think are the best guys out there look i'm good at math that i can do with lawrence okay where are we going to get the capacity you know to to sign new guys or how do we get enough of flow of minimum guys? Where are we going to get our capacity to shape our team?

Because everybody knows we're over the cap. We're actually in the tags. But when you're over the cap, you don't have much flexibility to shift around your roster. And if you say, hey, look, we're close, but not quite there, how do you get the flexibility? There are other guys who can tell you player A versus player B. About my only real contribution is to say, hey, I saw some high school kid in Seattle and he looked really good.

He put up 60. Well, and it turns out, probably a kid will be the number one or number two pick next year. Well, this year's Fultz, but the kid next year, Michael Porter Jr., he plays in the same league as my son

so I have watched him play a few times you're like hey this kid Porter Jr. said they're like yeah we know he's on our radar yeah thank you very much for your scouting go back to that Matthew stuff it seemed from afar the biggest

the biggest kind of I don't want to say mistake because i don't know if you knew any better but doc being the coach and the gm and having the kind of power and authority he had i think i think those are two different jobs and i and it seems like you realize that because you recalibrated but i i just think it's impossible for one guy to do everything because coaching a team is a full-time thing to have a first round pick and you know kind of on the side you're also figuring out what to do there it's just too much no it's it's too much the thing i like about our structure is we we have two full-time

guys lawrence and doc lawrence works for doc yeah which i think is good then there's nobody can hide and say oh i'm not accountable. So-and-so didn't do what so-and-so said to do. I get one point of accountability for our basketball operation. We don't have the front office pointing at the coach, the coach pointing at the front office, and yet we still now have a really, really hardworking... Lawrence is new to front office this year, but there's nobody who will ever outwork Lawrence.

There's nobody who will ever get around and... Lawrence, he's like a sponge. He'll go to everybody who's a GM, has ever been a GM, what can I learn? What can I learn? Takes notes. I have a friend up in Seattle named Bob Whitsitt who used to be involved with the Sonics. Lawrence said, can I pick his brain?

Like three hours later, Bob says, wow, that guy was super curious, wants to know what's going on. So we have a full-time guy who I think is incredibly talented, still new to that part of the business. And I think what we have, though, is a single point of accountability. You know, there are plenty of owners who say, you know, your front office should report separately to the owner from the coach. Plenty of people will say that. And yet there's a semi-trend, you know, whether it was Pat Riley or Thibodeau or Van Gundy in Detroit, Doc here. It's certainly not a foreign concept.

Paul Allen will tell me, you know, Steve, you've got to keep them separate. But there's almost this, if you look at the Seahawks, which Paul also owns, there's this weird sort of mystical symbiotic relationship between Pete Carroll and John Schneider that means he really does have a single point of accountability to the Hawks. What's the biggest, what's the best way you've gotten better on the business side? Because that was another one where there was like, oh man, all these new people on the Clippers business side, it's a mess over there. And then it seems like the ship's been righted over the last year. Well, I think there are three things. Number one, we hired Gillian Zucker and gave her some time to work into it. I mean, she knows about how to take care of people

at events. When you run NASCAR tracks, you learn how to handle what I call high capacity. That track's not busy except maybe four days a year, and you've got to provide high customer service so those people are not going to bring their RVs and come back for four days next year.

So I think we hired a person, and first year, she's learning basketball too. So that's number one. Number two, this ticketing thing, and it is actually more complicated than you think. We were talking about that earlier. And I think I'm getting, you know, Gilly and I, we're getting a grab on what that really means to try to give the fans what they want and what's going to help us optimize revenue. How many seats do you sell the brokers, this, that,

the other thing. So I think that's the second thing and i had a third thing in my head oh game operations this is probably the business thing i spend most of my time thinking about how do you get the fan base going you know literally during the game from the 20 minutes before all the way through halftime yeah yeah yeah that's important to me that's that sorry to your to your to your sound guy i'm i'm apologizing for banging my hands but yeah that's important to me yeah and there are a lot of different ways to do it i didn't love the way we were doing it before i came on board i didn't even know there was a way you know we're gonna keep i didn't know anything was happening

they were just kind of throw the ball out you mean before i got there now before yeah well they started the last couple years. The video before the starting line, they started tinkering. But you should have been there in like 2006. No, that's the thing. Probably on the business side, you could say that's the intersection of business and basketball. That's the stuff I've probably put more attention. What should we do in our timeouts?

I don't like the way the music comes into the timeout. It's got a crescendo right into the end of the timeout so everybody's plumping and thumping right when the game starts. Chuck, why do we bring along Chuck? Because I think there's a difference sometimes between having a voice yell,

get on your feet! Not bad, but I saw the coyote in San Antonio and he just holds up a sign. Ooh, the place erupts. I said, God,

we got to have the equivalent of the coyote. Actually, I met a guy just retired. Just hire the coyote. Well, the guy who was the coyote just retired.

And this guy comes up to me at my seat like two games ago, three games ago, said, I want to introduce myself. I'm the former Coyote. Oh, wow.

And I've been praising this guy. You were amazed? I've praised him everywhere. And he said, yeah, you guys have asked me to coach up Chuck. So I'm here to provide coaching to Chuck. Boom! But everything, you know, how many t-shirts do you fire at timeouts? We fire a lot more t-shirts than anybody else. It's an incredible volume of fired t-shirts.

I agree. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Well, I have a partner. It's a good thing if you want to watch people just clothesline each other to get a $9 t-shirt, which I enjoy. It's not quite clear, but let's take the arenas where they take one t-shirt and they tease everybody and then they fire it. I don't think the fans get up the same way.

I like the way we do it. I like it too. But you can think about it. You can talk about it. You know, what do you do? Fourth quarter, we do the, make some noise. We have the meter. Is that right?

Do we pick exactly the right songs? During the game, you're actually a lot more prescribed. The league tells you there's like 11 songs you can use. I think you need more sports movie clips would be my one add. I agree with you. The Celtics are great at the Rudy clips, the Hoosiers, the old school, like just mixing those in. The Warriors are pretty good at it. When I gave sales meeting speeches at Microsoft, I was pretty good at it, especially music. Yeah, yeah. That's good.

We're ready to rumble. People don't even use that that much anymore. I'm going to do my Scott Van Pelt impersonation for this next question. Steve, I know this is a tough question to ask, and it's my responsibility to ask it. I don't like asking it, but I'm going to have to ask it. This is year six of Chris and Blake. They have never made round three together. It's year

four of Docs, Chris, Blake, and DJ. And if this team doesn't make it this year, pass round one, or if it flames out in round two or whatever, it's hard for me to imagine that everybody just comes back and we're just like, all right, seventh time might be a charm. Is there a a finish line on this team good or bad this spring well i get a lot of

excitement about what what we can accomplish this spring and that's our and this isn't just one of those blah blah blah answers that really is our focus i mean we have a hundred just think of positively we have a hundred scenarios of course do it positively. We have a hundred scenarios. Of course, do you plan every scenario? Of course you do. Of course you do. I mean, look, Blake's a free agent. Chris is a free agent.

JJ's a free agent. We're going to have to win them to come back. Yeah. If we want them back, we're going to have to go out there and win. I don't think you're going to have to win Chris back. Considering Chris is in charge of the players unit and they just created this new rule that the guy at Max Steel could extend until you're 38 years old. Wow. Considering Chris is in charge of the players' union and they just created this new rule that the max deal can extend until you're 38 years old.

Wow, that was great for Chris Paul. He just happens to be turning 38 at the end of his next max deal or whatever age. It's not lost on me, though. It's not lost on me. So we don't know what hand we're going to have. So we've got a ton of scenarios that we're planning for. But just as a basketball fan and somebody who's been going to these games

for the last three or four years, at some point, I think with every basketball team you have to decide, does this group work? Can we win a title with this group? You hold us accountable. Our job right now is to win. I think our job in the summer is very different, depending on how much success we have, between now and June.

Hear me? June. How much do you go backwards and go, all right, we haven't even made round three yet, but I was there for game six, 2015, when the game was over, and then Josh Smith and Corey Brewer start making threes. The Clippers, everybody's dead from, oh, now you're, the audience can't see you but

it's like i'm i'm stabbing with a sword right now well you are uh you are the clippers are super tired some crazy threes momentum switches crowd got as nervous and deer in the headlights as i've ever seen a crowd in my life everything snowballs all of a sudden you're not going around three last year blake gets hurt. Throw that year out. He has to fight with the equipment manager. It's just a year from hell. Chris gets hurt. Chris gets hurt.

I mean, you can make excuses for the last two years and say, that was a fluke. Last year was a fluke. I'm not making any excuses. I'm not saying you are. I'm saying excuses can be made. I don't think Doc would either. But this year, everybody's healthy.

I mean, guys getting hurt's a little different. I mean, people say, oh, they can't win without their two leading scorers. There's something reasonable about that. Injuries are a special category. But otherwise, no, you own your success. That's the way it works.

I would say there are really no outs for this season. Everybody's healthy. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, when they're I would say there are really no outs for this season. Everybody's healthy. No. Chris Paul and Blake Griffin, when they're both healthy and playing well, are two of the best 12 to 15 players in the league, depending on what your list is. More high. DJ is an all-star setter.

Yeah. You have shooters. All-in-VA. You have a coach who won a title in 2008. Yep. You're in a conference that the guy on the best team is recovering from a knee surgery. You have the Spurs that don't have... I don't think it's surgery, did it?

Well, it's sprained knee. It's sprained. I don't know if he actually... Did he need a surgery? I actually don't know. No, I don't think he did. Whatever they're doing. Okay, whatever.

The Spurs, it's Kawhi and no Tim Duncan anymore. And we play them well. We play them well. We lost the last game, should have won it. We've beaten them twice this year. Houston has a bunch of guys that, other than James Arden, Lou Williams, Ryan Anderson, Eric Gordon, none of those guys have ever really been in a gigantic playoff game.

So, I mean, Utah, no playoff experience really at all. We've got a great team, and this is our time. And our guys know that. The only thing we're doing right now, or the most important thing we're doing right now, is getting our rhythm back with the same group that opened the season. We were in rhythm. Everybody was functioning well those first 16 games of the year.

And then people start getting hurt. And then a lot of things change because guys are playing with different guys. You get out of your year. And then people start getting hurt. And then a lot of things change because guys are playing with different guys. You get out of your pattern. Now we've spent, what, how long has it been since Chris got back? I don't know, six, seven games, maybe something like that.

Really getting our rhythm back. He looked great in the Utah game. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you lost it in the last four minutes, but he was fantastic. And they shot lights out. I mean, look, we defended. We they shot lights out. They played very well. We defended, actually, decently on those threes, but they shot lights out.

I think the Cleveland game on Saturday is going to be a really good test. I think so, too. I'm not going to say the season's over or not, depending on how that thing— if we win, we're not NBA champions. And if we lose, we're not dogs. I agree with you. It's ABC, Saturday night. You're going to have a great crowd.

You're going to have some Cavs fans there too. There's going to be a little bit of a soccer element. LeBron has just perennially been an awful matchup for the Clippers. Although we beat him in Cleveland earlier this year. But the small forwards, which really nobody can stop. But, you know, that's been a little bit of a kryptonite for the Clips. But the truth is, I think we've got about as good a small forward in the NBA to guard LeBron as anybody.

I put Luke up there with anybody in terms of, I mean, LeBron's hard to guard. You know, LeBron's LeBron. LeBron's listening now. LeBron's spidey sense is just active. No, he's LeBron. Clippers owner said someone can guard me. I didn't say that. I said we got about as good a guy as you're going to put on him in the league.

I believe that. No, he's about as good. LeBron's a superstar. There's no question. But you say, who are the best guys to match up against him, as good as he is? I mean, you'd certainly put Kawhi Leonard on that list, no question about that. There's some other good 3 and D guys.

Kawhi's been incredible. Yeah, he's incredible. Listen, I think you need to step it up. I don't think you've given enough this year on this side. I think you need to ramp up. I think you need to start drinking caffeine again. I just think you need to go up a level. I don't feel like you want it.

You may be busting my chops, but DJ does that to me after some games. He says, I didn't hear you tonight. Where were you? What's wrong with you tonight? I think we need playoff Steve Ballmer. I think we're ready. We'll have it.

Unless I do too many podcasts and blow my voice out. Other than that, I'll be good. Damn, I mean, we're out of time. I had all these questions about Apple, but you'll come back at some point. Sure. This was fun. I didn't get you in trouble.

No, not at all. Well, if you did, I did it to myself. Did we get him in trouble? Seth, did we get him? Yeah. No, it was a lot of fun. Thanks, Bill. Just quickly, Microsoft, good shape?

What's a quick scouting report? Hey, stock's at 65. The world thinks Microsoft's in super good shape. And I love my successor. Company is navigating. It's always a tough sort of set of waters in tech. Yeah, pretty good. Pretty darn good.

I'm still a Microsoft Office user. I never bought in on the Apple. I still use the IBM ThinkPad with my Microsoft Office. I don't think I chose that. 20 years. don't know if that shows up. 20 years. You can hear that on the podcast. There we go, baby. 20 years of Microsoft Office Word. You're good, man. Good luck with the rest of the season.

Now I'm for sure coming back. All we need to do now is to get you to other than your beloved Celtics, blah, blah, blah, we got to get you to be a completely committed Clipper fan. And we're going to figure out how to bar you from the building every time we play the South.

I hid in the suite the last time because I always feel bad with the people in my section. They look at me like I'm a traitor. Do you bring green when we play the South? No, I wear some sort of maybe a hat. I try to be respectful. You take the Bostonian out of boston but you're respectful listen i'm coming on saturday night good i i just better look over and be like wow balmer's lost his mind tonight he really wants this one if i don't feel

that way i'm gonna feel like this podcast was not a success and you know what i hope you do if i don't deliver i hope you you'll record an appendix to this podcast that says, Balmer didn't show up tonight! Thank you. Thanks, Bill. Okay, thanks again to SimpliSafe. They make protecting your family simple with 24-7 professional monitoring, powerful sensors,

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Don't forget about Michael Lombardi's new podcast, GM Street, which can be found on that Ringer NFL Show feed. And don't forget about my latest column. On TheRinger.com, it's about the most dramatic NBA lottery in 14 years. Enjoy March Madness. Enjoy the weekend. We will be back next week. That's it. I don't have a few years

with him on the wayside I'm a person never I don't have a few years