The Bill Simmons Podcast - Rockets GM Daryl Morey and Music Legend Jimmy Iovine (Ep. 233)

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

Daryl Morey discusses Houston's monster acquisition of Chris Paul, his 12-year Rockets stint, free-agency stories, and ways the NBA should improve its game and yearly calendar. Then, music legend Jimmy Iovine (46:05) remembers his amazing career and talks about his new HBO documentary, 'The Defiant Ones.' Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast with Daryl Morey and Jimmy Iovine. Brought to you by SeatGeek, our presenting sponsor. The easiest way to shop for the best tickets thanks to their revolutionary grading system. Buy and sell tickets in just two taps on your phone. Everything fully guaranteed. Right now, my listeners get $10 off baseball tickets. The first time they use SeatGeek, use promo code BSMLB. Download the SeatGeek app today or go right to SeatGeek.com.

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It is available right now. You can subscribe to it on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. House of Carbs, the greatest art we've ever done for a podcast. I am so jealous. Coming up right now, Rockets GM, Daryl Morey. But first, Pearl Jam. Okay, we're taping this. 10.30. Monday morning, July 3rd.

So if anything crazy happens over the next few hours, don't blame us because Daryl Morey is here. Hi, Daryl. Thanks for having me on. Rockets GM. You haven't been on in a while. Yeah, I think last time I got fined like 100 grand or something. So I'm trying to avoid that this time.

You landed Chris Paul. He's a very famous basketball player who plays well. We are very excited about that. Have you met him? Have you hung out with him? Yes, absolutely, yeah. So he's been in L.A. and came to our Iguodala meeting. He came to the Iguodala meeting. He came to the Iguodala meeting.

He was recruiting. Oh, man. So that was a big reason we were excited to get the trade done early because we go into free agent with more tools, trade exception, biannual full mid-level, and Chris Paul at meetings. So it was pretty good. That's amazing. So you do that trade early.

You get Chris Paul. You give up a couple of really good assets. Lou Williams on a great contract. Beverly, who everybody was trying to get last February, good contract. Sam Decker, young wing guy, give up a pick. Montrose Harrell. And Harrell, who I'm still mad the Celtics didn't take.

So you get Chris Paul. They missed that. They were going to take him. I think we had like seven chances to take him. We just kept not taking him. He just went one pick earlier. Yeah, you took him. So Chris Paul comes in.

But then because you do the trade early, you create this exception that enables you to get P.J. Tucker. P.J. Tucker. Also, the exception allowed us to go for Iguodala and guys like that. And obviously that didn't work out. But we did get a bunch of guys paid around the league with our trade exception so far. But we'll hold on to that through the season.

And I think teams try too much to just make everything perfect right in July. You know, like you don't need your best team on July 4th. You need your best team in April 15th. So I like to keep some powder dry. We're probably going to keep our biannual, keep our trade exception alive through the year. And then if we take an injury or something's not working, we can make a move. I'm glad you said that because it does seem like a lot of teams

try to finish their team in July, August, and September. And especially if you have a good team and we've seen it the last couple of years, January, February, these minimum buyout guys are available. And if you're a good team, you have an amazing chance of getting them. Yeah, no, I think a lot of times teams, you know, they want to finish July 4th and then off to the Cape or Jersey shore or, or San Diego. So who knows? But I do think it's, it's definitely smart to stay flexible. I think one of the, what happens to teams, especially if they get two stars or I hope someday

maybe we'll have a third guy to add, they get locked in, you know, because they have their picks concombered through 20-80, no seconds. And so we have all our first 19 going forward, most of our seconds, and a bunch of international players that we think could help. So staying flexible and be good. That's sort of our theme. Sergio Lowe. What is he, like 45 now?

MVP. Best guy in the EuroLeague. You know what? It turns out. I think he's my age now. I think I want to play in Madrid because Madrid must be awesome. It must be incredible. He's turned down some deals I cannot believe.

Deals you offered him. Yeah, we pretty much talk every year. We flirt with each other every year. And I actually do think he's going to play for us. It may be on the back end, but he's maybe one of the best guards ever in Europe. If he came in right now is he immediately like a third guard if he came in now he would be he'd be an impact at least a quality rotation player in the nba if not better well maybe your owner needs to start

stepping it up a little bit maybe he needs to fly out there to madrid and take the guy out to dinner you know coach mckale and i did that and i thought that was here we're gonna get him um it's not an ownership thing you know unless you know we only have the tools we have you know like unless you're pro krav you don't have any way to boats yeah do some other wait so his life is so great in madrid that you now have this team that has a chance to win the NBA title potentially. He could come over here. He could make, I'm guessing, as much money as he makes there and try to play in the best league on one of the best teams. And that's just not attractive? It's attractive, but I think, I'm just telling you, Madrid must be awesome. He wins MVPs and titles.

I think he's just about to get married. I think he's getting married soon. Every week you should email him. Hey, it's Daryl. How are you? I think I tweet at him. I pine for him on Twitter. You've hit almost rock bottom twice as a GM and both times rallied out of it in an amazing way. The first time you stockpiled all those picks that year, the year

you ended up getting James Harden, you were so ready to make a move, all these things you're trying to trade with everybody. Nothing's happening. You go through the summer of 2012 and you just end up with these three picks. They were like 12, 16, and 18. None of them were impact guys. And now you're looking at this going, crap, what am I going to do? And then the James Harden trade falls. One of them was Royce White.

Yeah, yeah, Royce White who barely played. MVP of Canada. MVP of Canada. Jeremy Lamb, Terrence Jones. and you just you have all these small pieces you can't turn them into anything you have all these attract you have the attractive uh what was the pick you traded for kyle lowry that was uh inverse protected toronto pick right so you have that you have some expirings the chris paul trade falls through you're gonna get Gasol on that trade

right? correct that falls through correct now you got nothing James Harden comes in now all of a sudden you're a genius again

then last year terrible Harden Howard bad chemistry everybody's like oh my god this is it rebound D'Antoni comes in now you got Chris Paul and James Harden Howard bad chemistry everybody's like oh my god this is it rebound

D'Antoni comes in now you got Chris Paul and James Harden in the same team Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon had a big part of that big thing yeah good times

were you how worried were you what time were you more worried the first time or the second time I would say you missed one rock bottom which was in 09

where we I thought we had maybe our title team and you know we had our test tracy yeah oh yeah i'm shane that was a competitive rock bottom there yeah well then you know through the season we lost mcgrady we lost y'all in the playoffs and we still took the lakers to seven who went on to win the title uh but that was when we pretty much thought you know

ming might be done we knew tr knew Tracy McGrady was probably done. And, you know, we don't do the rebuilding thing. Our worst, you know, both rock bottoms you mentioned that we've been at have been 41 at least win seasons. But, you know, in many ways, as you know, that can be worse, right? Because, you know, you don't have a high pick coming. For you, it's the worst. You're in no man's land.

Oh, I know. You're going crazy. It's actually all my analytics friends during that period were just killing me because they're like, what's the worst lottery pick to have? 14. And we got it like four straight years. I was losing my nerd cred, man. It was tough.

Yeah. And, you know, but, you know, we had to fight through it. And I would say I would say two years ago might have been worse where, you know, we thought, you know, we may have just made the Western Conference finals and then we only won half our games the next year. I think that was definitely worse. And, you know, from our owner, Leslie Alexander, to me, to, you know, the James Harden to everyone, we were like, that shit's not happening again. We're going to pull out of this. And we took some heat even for signing Ryan, signing Eric Gordon, obviously adding Coach D'Antoni.

I think most people thought that was a mistake. You know, our owner was instrumental in that. He always was excited how Mike's team's played. And he really, really wanted to look at him hard and actually got mad at me that I didn't sign him immediately. Right, I remember that. But I was doing my diligence. Mike's still mad at me for this, but I was doing my diligence.

You know, we were sort of looking either at Mike or maybe more of a Brad Stevens type profile, a young up-and-comer. And I was doing my diligence on the ladder. We knew Mike was the guy we wanted if we went veteran. And, you know, it's really, you know, it's been exciting. And we wanted to get back to being a destination and free agency. You know, that year really hurt us for the premier free agent who happens to be on the best team in the league now.

Because I think if either this year or the two years ago happened, you know, we have a real shot at him coming to Houston. But our timing was off. Al Horford? Hey, these are things I can't say, but you can say. But we really – and the plan really worked. We got ourselves back to contention, and that obviously led ultimately to having a great season

and then Chris Paul coming here. Did you start to worry at some point? Like some of the stuff you were doing, 06, 07, 08, was a great time to be a GM, especially if you were using advanced metrics and not a lot of other people were. It was a great time. And as the league starts to evolve, now everybody's looking at the same data you're looking at. if you were using advanced metrics and not a lot of other people were it was a great time and as

the league starts to evolve now everybody's looking at the same data you're looking at and everybody's trying to steal little tricks that you and some other teams are doing and then by 2013-14 there weren't a lot of old school teams anymore everybody was new school did you worry like oh like this happened to billy Bean a little bit in baseball, right? Yeah. Where he had an advantage, and then all of a sudden it wasn't an advantage anymore. It's a real problem. I mentioned this in the Michael Lewis piece that our draft, it happened again this year.

It was very frustrating because we were picking in the 40s. Yeah. I would say almost always in the 40s. We end up with a guy like 23 to 26 on our board, we go like that that's not bad like that's a late first quality which can be good i mean this year again man it was like straight down our board and i'm not saying our board is great but it's like we obviously have a lot of pride in it we've you know i think by our analysis we're like the fourth best drafting team over the last 11 years um so but yeah the draft's more efficient you know free agency you even see

it here good teams are being smarter about doing shorter deals and yeah and things like that that's sort of frozen up the market relative to the past um yeah you know teams tanking is really smart i mean like it did we've never done it but it if you're gonna be out of it and you can't compete with golden state you should be looking hard at what philly did because you know like they're sitting there with like multiple first round picks multiple ever so um i think teams are just getting they may not go extreme extreme hinky but they're being smarter about how they use their cap space and yeah it's it's just, yeah, it's harder. But hey, that's the job. It was funny knowing you during the Philly process thing because Hinckley was your dude.

I was like the only guy defending him. You loved it. But you had always said this to me, that this was, if you had no hope, this was the strategy is just to go completely hopeless and try to lose for three straight years and stockpile lottery picks. I mean, the Houston Astros are benefiting now.

Jeff Luno did an amazing job with that. And, uh, you know, I wish. The Cubs did it too. Cubs did it. You know, Theo's obviously one of the best, best out there. You know, you know, when we hit that rock bottom after, you know, we lost Yao Ming and Tracy had a conversation with our owner, really showed them like the two paths and you know the the philly path is more reliable like you you know you can get a high pick by just sucking right and that's why people hate it yeah because it's you know it's simple i owe everyone can suck there's a thousand ways to be terrible and jeff van gundy makes the best points on that but it is more reliable way to get back

into contention but there is the other path which is the one we took which is yeah reliable way to get back into contention, but there is the other path, which is the one we took, which is, yeah, you have to just be very careful on your contracts, make sure everything is set up so that those players are helping you have future options. You stockpile picks and then you got to pounce with a trade, but you know,

you can wait a long time for a team to, you know, trade a guy like James Harden. That could take very long. Whereas if you go the tank route, you might be three or four years and you're already a couple high picks into, into the whole thing. And it's much more reliable and probably quicker.

Well, you need some luck too. I mean, you honestly could have just ended up with Pau Gasol and then Harden comes on the board and you don't have a chance to get them. People say that, but like Pau, if we had gotten him no that

was really good well i think he was very good and i still think we could have done the james trade people say we couldn't and obviously i can't know what's in sam presty's head so maybe it wouldn't have worked yeah but the reality is like we were you know it was going to be basically scola and kevin martin for pow gasol and you know we would have still had the same other pieces in the trade except kevin martin and we could have you know, we would have still had the same other pieces in the trade except Kevin Martin. And we could have, you know, if we wanted to piece that trade together, we could have always traded Pau for Kevin Martin and really pieced it together that way.

Yeah, interesting. So I don't think that that couldn't have happened. But, yeah, you need a little. They're still only letting one team win out of 30, so you need a lot of luck. Either your picks that are high have to be have to pan out or you have to be able to pounce when a trade comes at some point because you're probably you're generally not signing a star it's really rare we've happened to do it twice with Dwight and

now Chris uh well Chris was a trade but it was sort of one of those ones that you know because he could leave was like like Lewinin, LeBron and, uh, Bosch went to Miami. Those were technically trades, but obviously they were free agency. So. When did you feel like big guys started to become less impactful as I cannot contend unless I have a star center? I would say my thinking's evolved there in the last maybe three years. Um, cause I love big guys yeah i do

too i mean like i you know i'm not that i'm not tall obviously i wasn't a pro player i was a pretty good high school player and i but i played inside at six four because i was at a pathetic small high school in ohio um so at six four i was actually moderately big i played it so you know everyone you know like every gm like has their soft spot for players. I have a soft spot for big guys who play tough. You know, like P.J. Tucker. I got a soft spot for a guy like that who's big, bang, Chuck Hayes, you know, even Dwight Howard.

I love guys who play big, strong, and tough. And it's been tough for me to realize that that role is fading. And really, the modern NBA center is a guy like Clint Capella, you know, mobile, fast, rim protector, screen roller, lob dunker. That really is the modern five. And everyone else has got to be able to shoot and defend. If that's true, then how does New Orleans only go for, like, 30 cents on the dollar at the trade deadline last year?

Yeah, he's about to be a free agent. But there's five versions of him in the entire league probably. Maybe a few more than that. I mean, I think everyone keeps getting pushed to the five. So a lot of the athletic fours are now fives. I think there's more. I'd have to count and look. So do you think somebody like Jonathan Isaac could eventually be a stretch five

with the way teams are playing basketball now? Yeah, absolutely. No doubt. Yeah. He was the most intriguing. Are you allowed to talk about other prospects or no? Because I thought he was the most intriguing of the top six for like just I don't know what position he is but where basketball is going he might be a center I don't know I'll just

talk generally about it because we talked a lot about actually shooting fives yeah like that's like if you a rim protecting rebounding guy who can shoot threes that's gonna be there's and there's a few unicorns like that in the league now that's gonna be the the super unique asset that like maybe no one no one will have that's why i was losing my mind when it seemed like uh your friend phil jackson for two seconds might actually trade porzingis because i was like there's three guys in the league like this two of them are on the warriors and now and now here's porzingis a rim protector philly has one too i think potentially yeah if he can stay in

the court yeah a rim protector who can shoot threes on the other end it's like that's the hardest thing to find and you've you've struck oil if you have that you cannot trade porzingis yeah so i think they well i think they wise, wisened up. Yeah. I think it's, it's a very unique skill, but you're going to see it. Cause like literally you go to the playground. Yeah.

Every single kid is shooting threes. They're all messing up their shop for later. Cause they're trying to hoist NBA threes at age six or whatever. You know, and that's why, you know, but all the bigs are handling the ball. All the bigs are face up ball all the bigs are face

up all the bigs are trying to shoot three so there's gonna be uh like there's gonna be a a bumper crop coming i don't know when but it's coming yeah i wonder like so you think like the guys that we grew up with um like brad doherty love brad one of your favorites your team was the calves growing up a lot of people don't know that. But Brad Doherty now, time machine Brad Doherty, is shooting threes from age 10. For sure. And I don't know if he even has a jump hook. No, no.

I have a jump hook. No one has a jump hook. I love my jump hook. Jump hooks are out. In my old man game where I'm terrible, I'm like, you you know that's that you know that's like we like modi unis had a jump book he was like everyone was like wow both hands left and right you know so yeah but like brad doherty he does he's not developing

his game like that ewing i think had to have been a center no matter what because just the size and athleticism of him. I can't imagine him shooting three. I don't know. Who knows, though? All the Memphis Center shooting threes. I mean, like, you know. Hold on.

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Maybe. You have to be careful on that. He's already spending you know they wouldn't it doesn't he doesn't need more money he's spending on everybody he just paid kyle corver and he's he's gonna be paying all his you know other owners a lot in luxury tax wait we have i have to ask you a couple things here that uh i cannot get answers for one 2016 the big the big cap spending spree of 2016. The cap's up. Oh, my God.

Everybody has so much money to spend. This is amazing. The cap's going to keep going up and up. Here, everybody, take some money. And now this year, the cap went backwards. So you're looking at this. I understand the reasons why the cap jumped last year. It went up like, what, $25 million or $21 million, new media rights, all that stuff.

It goes up to $100 million? Yeah. Yeah media rights all that stuff goes up to 100 million 100 yeah yeah i think well yeah 100 and then so then they thought this year was going to go to like 109 110 right which was part of when everybody's spending money last year they're thinking well it's going to go up another 10 this year it goes backwards and now you have all these teams that are screwed and it's and it's kind of chaos why didn't people know this was going to happen last year what were the dynamics the nba guidance was up like nba guidance was it was gonna go up i think nine million originally so teams were sort of relying on that and then so the nba was just wrong well some of it's very hard for the nba to forecast like for example cleveland and golden state mowing through the playoffs. You know, Golden State bangs out like $7 million to $10 million per playoff game.

So the fact that we lost like probably eight to 10 playoff games, it knocked the cap down like $4 million or $5 million. It was a big factor in the cap going down. I know Mike Zarin on the Celtics was calculating every game that was lost. He was having a stroke. We lost another $400,000. Mike was so threading the needle on their cap space like we were talking about one trade where they get one

pick like i forget one that was like 15 to 17 or whatever and then i was like would you do the deal if i get you the 18th thing he was like no no, that'll mess up my cap by 50 grand. So I was like, man, Mike, you're on top of this. Jesus. And then the other thing was they made that pension deal with the ex-players, right? With the retired players. And I think some of that knocked down the cap, too, because the players and the owner.

I think that knocked it down by a couple million. But now it's somewhere in 99. That was a good thing, though. No, that's a great thing. I talked to a lot of the retired NBA players, and these guys built the league, and more money should have been coming to them. Well, you had Moses died in Houston, what, six months ago?

About a year ago around this time. Very sad. Tragically, like right after an event. No, the pension thing is fantastic. I just don't think that I I'm just, I guess I'm surprised this league that is so centered around competitiveness, looking for an edge. And yet now you have this crucial spending spree moment and the budget,

the budgets are just like kind of arbitrary. It's like, ah, no, now you got 99 instead. And it's like these teams that are planning for five years and there's $10 million less than that, that they're planning with. It seems like a weird way to do business. I think everyone was trying to work out a different solution to that, but just couldn't, you know, to, to be fair to the league and everybody. I'm not criticizing the league. It just seems like.

It did create and it it hurt because players now compare salaries yeah and and they don't understand how you know this guy's getting this and that guy's getting that and you have to just explain it was just random they were free agent at this year instead of that year and it's not just the cap jump it's like randomly are you a year where there's a lot of point cards if you're a point guard then you you end up getting less or randomly a year when there's either a scarcity or of wings like it it's there's no the rationale rationality of like who gets what in free agency is it it's tough for agents and players because it's just like almost random at times and they it gets everyone frustrated and i have to deal with the repercussions which is like everyone like you know we like um

one of the players who just went to philly got you know got like 23 million and chris paul is like i'm making 24 million right and so so you know you get like random stuff like that where they just don't it's just hard for them to process you know so yeah it's it's almost like a video game yeah it it the reality is is not is not good and so do you think part of the reason we had our strategy last year getting getting ryan and eric on uh well you know you know good deals for the team obviously took us to 55 wins, was in that market last year, we were like, let's get the premier guys quick, pay a little more, because we thought that the next tier down was going to be people paying like $10 million to $15 million.

That's when you get in trouble. For guys who should be making $3 million to $5 million at best. Well, it does seem like we're headed toward a reckoning next week where there's going to be too many free agents left and not a lot of agents fired yeah i've i've heard you know i've heard players getting like 30 million wanting to fire their agents and stuff like that i mean like that's i mean that's insane right yeah but it is actually crazy you know like one of the big moments in my career um early on where i was

like welcome to the job moment i think it was maybe two years in was when i offered a it was i think at the time a 137 million dollar max deal to chris bosh and and and it was like he was gonna go lie in his birdcage with the paper and And I was like, well, you or I would be shaking if someone's like sliding you $137 million deal. And for him, obviously he had many teams courting him. So it was just yet another $137 million. It was very eye-opening. Yeah, but I remember talking to you.

I was having lunch in east la with my dad and i ended up talking to you and it was during the 90 minute window when you thought you had chris bosh and you were out of your mind i was you're like oh my god we're gonna we're gonna win the title next year i'm gonna have james hard and chris bosh and dwight howard we nobody's going to be able to match up with us. I mean, obviously, you know, if that team had been healthy all year, I think we would have maybe had the best team in the league. That was heading into

14-15, right? Yeah, I think so. See, 14-15, that's like one of the great what-if titles. Yeah, the Warriors were like, they were good, but they were still, they hadn't really gone through the four rounds of playoff intensity. Spurs were great, obviously they hadn't really gone through the four rounds of playoff intensity. Spurs were great, obviously.

Miami was still great. Well, we would have obviously injured Miami. That was the lost. I mean, really, the Clippers, that's when you look at the what-ifs for the Clippers and the Josh Smith-Corey Brewer game. Is that the greatest sports moment of your life? Yeah. For me, there's no doubt

and i was so were you at that game i was technically at the game you're just a puddle catatonic i was like i mean because j j james had been you know yeah he was on the bench because he was you know uh you know kevin was gonna bring him back in, but the group was rolling, so he rolled with them. Yeah, I remember. And so, you know, honestly, this was a great moment for Coach McHale because, you know, I'm like in my head like, what are we doing? Put James Harden back in the game. Like, you know, I would be the worst coach ever.

I'd be like, you know, Tom, you know, just screaming at everyone. I'd be insane on the sidelines. No one would like me. Right. And, and so, you know, I appreciated coach McHale at that moment. He pushed all the right buttons and yeah. And yeah, Corey Brewer, Josh Smith, Terrence Jones hit a three in that stretch. I think, I think we had a collective career, 29% shooters make, make, make about seven th checked yeah it was like and uh and then the clippers missed 14 straight shots and it wasn't that we came back from 17

down we then went up by like nine with like four minutes yeah two minutes to go or something like it was it was the you're never going to talk about that game with chris paul i'm guessing you know i actually we haven't talked about it don't bring that one up yeah that wasn't part of the recruiting pitch yeah that wasn't part of the recruiting pitch uh actually now now you say it I'm like I actually would enjoy getting his perspective of that whole thing because it was just a weird I've never had I've been through a lot of tough times in my career and you know everyone's who's rooted for a team their whole life whether it was the Cavaliers when I was growing up or the indians or browns especially you have those moments where like just the train wrecks coming and like and it happened

to the other team right once and like it was weird for me because like i haven't had the other team be the the one who's driving themselves off a cliff so It was, you know, I've been to an amazing number of basketball games in my life, and that was the weirdest game I've ever been to, ever. That's a statement right there. I've never seen a game like that in my life because I remember, and I was also thinking for you just as your friend, like Harden comes out, he was terrible, and his body language on the bench, and I'm thinking like, this is bad.

This is going to be a bad loss for them. And he's going to have to figure out, what do I do this summer? And it looked like you were going to lose by 30. And then you started coming back without Harden. And he wasn't engaged initially. And then he got into it. And you could kind of feel it. And at the same time, the Clippers, they had no bench that year.

They had played that tough Spurs series. They had six tough games against you and they just died. And it was like Blake died. It wasn't, I don't know if it was a choke or if it was dead legs, but it was, you could literally see them run out of gas. And you, your guys are playing with so much energy and the crowd, the crowd was like catatonic. Yeah. I mean... It was like, well, you might as well not have had people there.

It was like in an empty gym. The thing that struck me that only you could know, or if you're in LA, was how much the town hates the Clippers. I couldn't... It was like... I had friends at the Dodgers game when we were in Houston in game seven.

Yeah. And I guess they told me, I don't know if this is true, that when it was announced at the Dodger game that we had beaten them in game seven, the crowd cheered. Like, that's tough, man. It's a really weird dynamic. And that was one of the reasons i wrote about i wrote a column about blowing up the clippers on friday that was a great column thank you yeah well they ended up

i love your back to writing by the way thank you i appreciate it yeah um but one of the one of the reasons was that they had this this five month window of uh sorry my uh my friend jacoby keeps calling me you're a popular guy um they had this five year window where the lakers are a train wreck and they have chris paul and blake griffin and deandre and lob city and it's like the laker blood just runs so deep here and the laker fans hate the clippers and you feel it like at little moments of that dodgers game where it's like the clippers are supposed to be an la team and yet they have this small group of fans that love them they do have diehard fans I've met a lot and then a ton of Laker fans Clipper Darrell man Clipper Darrell and those people McCormick whether they suck or not so I get why he had to do the Blake thing like if I think it's really

tough to rebuild you can do it if you're in Philly you can do it if you're in Philly. You can do it if you're in Oklahoma City. I don't know if you can do it here when there's 10 other teams. It's a big reason why in Houston we never would choose. I think just because you have the Astros and the Texans. There's a competitiveness of our owner. There's a competitiveness of me, James Harden. Well, we didn't have James at the time, but we also had a great group of veterans. So it would have been hard to go to the tank route anyway.

But we also felt like Houston is a town where, obviously, they're coming back to the Strohs now, which is great, but for a while the Strohs were barely that you could get 500 people there. It felt like, I'm happy they're really turning around. I think they're the best team in baseball. But we felt like if we ever went through that in Houston, you might lose a whole generation of fans if you're bad for three, four years. So we felt like we went the right way.

I have some slight issues with your fans, but I'm not going to make you uncomfortable. I think the home court advantage could be a little better. Well, you're from boston so you know i'm used to a certain level of uh i have a certain level of expectations for a home crowd performance i mean our if you're i know you're gonna defensive this is why i didn't bring it up yeah yeah you're right if you're at game seven against the clippers yeah you would have seen our fans come out and and we we have great fans but you you've been in some of the all-time

great fan cities in your life. Well, definitely the cold weather cities, it means more. Well, yeah, you got nothing to do. You got nothing to do. It's cold. It's cold all the time. I lived in Boston for 10 years. Like, you know, you got to be going to an arena.

You don't want to be freezing your ass off outside. Last thing, and then we're going to go and we're going to tape some for the Ringer NBA show, too, that people can listen to if they want more data. Last thing, though, the calendar. I want to get your take on the calendar for the NBA because I have some real issues with it. I've been bitching about it forever. I've heard you. Adam Silver just loves getting notes from you.

Yeah, I don't know if he does. This is crazy. This is like one of the best four-day stretches you can have for the league. And the free agent signings, all this stuff, starts leaking on June 30th on a Friday. Everyone I know has Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, July 4th, Tuesday, Wednesday, basically either five days off or 10 days off or whatever. And yet this is the biggest time for the NBA. And it just seems crazy to me that they don't move everything into June so that it's more eventful. So here's my idea. I would cut down to 76 games, which I know you agree with.

Get rid of six back-to-backs. I would cut more, but I get that that's hard. I would love to get to 70, but 76. I think we'd all make more money too. So you start, you start the playoffs masters weekend, like April 7th, you rip through it and you're done like at the latest June 10th draft is June

17th. I would have shorter playoff series, which would help as well. I have an idea for that for you in a second. Draft like June 17th range. Free agency like June 25th. Everybody's locked in. Everybody's still around.

Everybody, like traffic, like we know from, we had like the two best traffic months we've had at the Ringer, partly because of the NBA. And now it gets to July and it's like, people who don't, or places that don't even have cell phone reception or wireless and things like that. NBA and now it gets to July and it's like people who don't are places that don't even have cell phone reception or wireless and things like that but why do they do it this way is it has anybody ever looked at each other and said this is stupid we're doing we're running one of our biggest weeks

in July 4th they talk about the schedule a lot I would say the you know as with everything it's a accident of uh of history right I mean yeah you know that's why we, it's a accident of, of history. Right. I mean, you know, that's why we have 82 games. Like that's why I think it's funny. It was decided in like 1969. 82 games, it's gotta be 82. Like, you know, if they had randomly decided 64, we'd still be playing 64 games. It's so stupid.

And people are like, no, 82 is perfect. That's why I like tweeted out like seven minute abs. You know, I got six minute abs. What about five minutes? No, no, no, not five. It's gotta be like, everyone thinks perfect that's why i like tweeted out like seven minute abs you know i got six minutes what about five minutes no no not five it's gotta be like everyone thinks the number's magic there's no chance that in 1950 whatever like someone decided 82 games and that was the perfect number like so you know i really think we should think thoughtfully about you know how how many games we play the great thing about commissioner silver I know, and he's working with the Players Union, we're going to have a shorter preseason. That's a great change.

That's going to be awesome. We need two preseason games at most. You're not sold on preseason and preseason practices. No. It's not like we're putting in football systems here. A lot of teams are running very similar things. Obviously, there's better and worse coaches, but, like, we don't need a month to learn the NBA playbook

when any diehard fan knows every team's playbook, basically, you know, after watching three games, basically. Oh, they're going to run a high screen? Yeah, no, yeah. Oh, they're going to run elbow action? Oh, this is new. Shooter in the corner? I haven't seen this yet.

So, you know, high splits? Yeah, I've never seen that. So yeah, we can do that shorter. Shorten the schedule. Spread the season out more. I hadn't thought of it. You think more about the entertainment side of the business. I just think about

winning. So you make a good point. If the big hot stove portion of the league could happen in June, there isn't a whole lot going on. We could see it like when the Markel Fultz trade happened. And that was like just prime. Everybody's locked in. And that was like this three-day event.

I mean, I felt like I had to do a podcast on Sunday. Our trade with the Clippers was like a two, three-day little. Although Stephen A was on vacation. So it wasn't, the whole media wasn't totally locked in all right a couple more ideas five game first round series but the two top seeds in each can't do that we got seven so can't switch to five bill seven is sacred even though we just switched i know but here but listen to me though i'm kidding i'm joking no i know I know. Five-game series, but the top two seeds in each conference get four of the five home games. Interesting.

Yeah. Just to make the regular season matter more. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. Hey, 7-8 seed, you want to come in and beat them? Yeah. You want to come in and beat them?

You got to beat them. Exactly. Got to take some home games off their court. Well, and your planned tournament is awesome. You could do that over two, three days. That one, I think, just out of pure spite to me, they don't want to do. That's actually been brought up and talked about. I mean, never got past any serious point.

But, you know, I joke about it all the time, but it's true. Teams have to take a lot of risks because only one team wins. And Europe has this great model where they're these you know if you don't win the champions cup you can win the king's cup or the you know you can win you know the the the euro league like there's different things you can win yeah and that that that's good like so even like having like a little tournament before the playoffs or a mid-season you know you know little cup among the top team something because it's just it's just darn depressing that like literally one team is happy at the end that's why the ncaa is brilliant final four like people talk like oh you

made the final four that's good they don't talk about you know it's great to win the title but you make the final four that's cool i think more randomness in the earlier rounds is. You have to. Because like. I would be one and done. People think I'm crazy. Like, I just think. Well, somebody said like 71 out of, I think it was in the last 18 playoffs, 71 of the

last 72 seeds were top four. Oh. That made the final, that made the final four. Yeah. Like basically if you're seed five, 6, 7, 8, you have no chance to make round three. Take our game, the NBA, which is an unbelievable game, I think the best pro game,

and the better teams beat the worst teams at a higher rate than any other sport already. Baseball, football, soccer, doesn't matter, hockey. The better teams beat the bad teams on a one-game basis more than any other sport. We or the Spurs are going to say beat the bad teams like 85%, 95% in one game. And then we play seven times.

Right. We should be the sport that plays once. Baseball playing seven, that makes sense because it's more random. They should play seven games a series. Like they should play seven game series. We should just play one game and just, just see who wins. And the TV attention to a golden state first round game playing whoever would be huge. Cause like you can win one game. They have a chance. Everyone knows golden state's going to be whoever they play the eight seed or

the, hopefully the seven seed next year, they're going to beat them in a seven. I remember, remember the Rex Chapman Suns. Oh, yeah. So they played the Sonics that year with GP. Yeah. And five game series. Yeah. I remember House and I made a big bet on the Suns because they were great odds.

They had a chance. And it's like the great thing about those series is if you were up 2-1, you'd game four at home. Yeah. You know, you had a real chance. You had a real chance. Nowadays, if you're up 2-1, you'd game four at home. You know, you had a real chance to. You had a real chance. Nowadays, if you're up 2-1, the other team's still going to win. Yeah, I think. Didn't Memphis get up 2-1 on Golden State like two years ago?

Well, but Indy went up 2-1 on Miami those two straight years. Bulls were up 2-0 on Boston this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everyone knows it's going to even out. I mean, we have to have shorter playoff series. So would you do one round or two rounds for shorter? I would do one. You would do five games for everything?

I would be NCAA tournament. You would? I would. I know everyone thinks I'm crazy, but we do it in football. Right. No one thinks it's crazy in football and the the the attention and the tv money for one and done like they would every game would be appointment viewing yeah the ncaa in 63 games like makes so much money for the ncaa tournament relative to what we make in like our

12 1250 regular season games and and however many playoff games, I don't have it in my head. Well, fewer this year. But, like, it would generate so much TV money that we'd all benefit. Now, it's a big gamble because it's such a shift from where we're at. That's why I don't think it'll happen. Yeah, you'll never get traction. That's why I don't think it'll happen. It's too real.

Like, the NBA is so good the way it is. Like, we'd almost need to go through a crisis like hockey did to get some of these changes. And we'd have to make you the grand poobah commissioner of all sport or something. Well, the first two rounds need to be fixed. They're not competitive enough. We don't have upsets and they're too predictable and it's not, you know. Anyway. All right.

If you want to hear more with Daryl, we're going to take it to the ringer NBA show. Thank you. Congrats on Chris Paul. Thanks. Appreciate it. We couldn't talk too much about how the Chris Paul thing happened. We can talk Clippers. Clippers called us about the trade and we did it. That's the story. That's, that's how it happened. Okay. This is great. Yeah. Cause you weren't, you weren't allowed to talk to him until July 1st. We are not allowed to talk. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, D is great. Yeah, because you weren't allowed to talk to him until July 1st. We are not allowed to talk to him. Yeah, okay.

Thank you, Daryl. We'll talk to you on the Ringer MBA show. We're going to take a quick break to talk about the CreditWise app with a message brought to you by Capital One. An athlete stays in shape by thinking about key factors that influence their game, eating well, practice, training, exercise. Well, it's the same thing if you're trying to keep your credit health in shape, right? There are key factors

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The best part, it's free for everyone, whether you're a Capital One customer or not. So download the free CreditWise app today and keep your credit strong. Okay, right now we have an interview that I did last week with Jimmy Iovine. He is one of the stars of the defiant ones, which is Darrell. Have you seen that? You've heard about the defiant ones? Heard about it,

but I've been pretty busy. It's a four part documentary. That's going to be on HBO next week. And it's, I think it's available on demand now. And it is about the partnership between Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre. And it's basically tells the story of the last 40 years of music.

Oh, it's in the promos and it looks awesome. I gotta say, I have a very, very high sniff test for docs, obviously, because I've been involved in a lot of them. Since you started them at ESPN? Yeah, yeah. I thought this was extraordinary. I really think this is, if you like music at all, you have to watch this.

It's really good. It's exceptionally well done. Alan Hughes directed it. It's one of my favorite documentaries that I've seen. And when I did this interview with Jimmy, I had not seen the documentary yet. So unfortunately, we had to kind of talk around that part. But this is a great interview and he's an amazing guy. So here it jimmy ivy all right we're taping this it's the end of june but we're going to run it a little closer to the documentary great uh jimmy ivy and it's here hbo is going to

i think july 9th yeah july 9th a massive documentary project called The Defiant Ones. Yeah. It's on my relationship with Dr. Dre and sort of how these two guys from, you know, different neighborhoods stayed together in some really difficult times and built a business. And, you know, and it's kind of, it's fun. It's fun. It's a lot of good lessons in there, I think. At least I got some lessons out of it. You're from Brooklyn? Yep.

He was from? Compton. Yeah, Compton. I wanted to make sure I got that right. I had to take it. I'm from Red Hook, Brooklyn. He's from Compton. Yeah.

And we lived in two, you know, in certain ways, racially charged neighborhoods, you know? And what about our lives? And then we met up in 1990 and it just clicked. And, um, he was, um, special guy.

And we went through a lot and, you know, the whole death row thing and a lot of ups and a lot of really downs. And we stay together and then we created beats and now we're at Apple. What was the biggest down at death row? Oh, Tupac. Absolutely. That's, that's,'s that's number one two and three yeah the movie's out are you gonna see it uh yeah no i'm gonna see it no

i've not seen it but i'm gonna see it no i haven't seen it no no no i didn't know where to start with you because there's too many places to go but i knew i was gonna end up at death row at some point so i wanted to talk about that a little bit okay mackinrow john mackinrow ironically we taped a podcast with him right before you showed up and he was saying ask him about this time and he mentioned some who was the rapper he mentioned tommy begin with a g it was a one hit wonder and it was it was like an early early rap like mid 80s and mackac was like, I don't know about this. And you were like, no, no, there's something here with rap. I don't know.

And you were kind of selling him on it. And he was like, I've always remembered that. He was really early. We had a lot of conversations about hip hop. Johnny's a great guitar player, you know. And at least he'd like me. He would like me to hear him say that. But he loves to play the guitar and he loves music. At least he would like me to hear him say that.

He loves to play the guitar and he loves music. He loves Springsteen and all that. So when hip-hop was coming around, he was not on board yet. How did you get on board? Because your background was totally different. Very simple. I came out of Rattle and Hum with U2 and I started Interscope. And writing Interscope was simple. One of the first things we did we i met uh john mcclain came in and introduced me to dray

and shug and they played me the chronic and i didn't know a lot about hip-hop but i knew whoever this was was a great record producer and i wanted to be involved with that person and so we started working together and the first five years of endoscope and death row were really uh enormously successful but enormously complex you know what i mean at least um all right so the chronic like how involved is what what notes are you giving you're like hey maybe take a little easy on easy here no maybe scale it back a tiny bit no no no when i get involved with somebody who's really talented i just give them the keys and let them drive i got nothing those are my favorite bosses yeah well you got to do that you got to i mean if you really know what talent is

if you know the difference you know some people need help yeah but some people really don't the matter of fact it works against it the minute you open your mouth and um he's one of those guys do you remember when he was telling you about snoop and this guy needs to be on the album and no no no he brought me the album completely finished oh absolutely they put the needle down and went the chronic and um it was um it was just incredible it was i never heard anything like it i didn't understand really hip-hop that much but as i'm listening to the words and I'm listening to what's going on, it was in 91 or whatever it was, what was going on in L.A.

I said, holy shit, these guys got it. These guys are nailing what's going on right now. And whenever you can get involved with something like that, that poetic and that intense, I was lucky to be involved so what's interesting about that and you were living in la at the time right and you and then when you got into music in the 70s or early 70s but all through and the music was kind of you know it was capturing so many things that were going on young people america vietnam all these different things and then you have hip-hop in the 90s the same thing it's a lot of it's capturing what's going on let's capture that

vibe i'm living in boston i don't know what's going on in la how the hell am i gonna know that you know cops are killing people in compton and stuff like that well i mean it's uh they reminded me of the stones snoop and dre they had that whole Altamont thing, you know, that whole energy that the Stones had in the late 60s and early 70s. And I related to it like that. And that's why I knew, you know, I said, if we can get this exposed, it's going to be massive. Getting it exposed is the hard part.

What was the, how did you get involved with Tupac? Tupac was signed by tom wally at interscope and uh you know tom's office was next to mine and again it was uh we split up the work and tom did a lot of the work on tupac and tupac was an extraordinary person to be in business with but when you lose someone like that on your record company or in general you know them it's a massive loss he was only 25 years old you know and uh just it's just shame it's just i have no idea why tupac is dead do you feel like i mean i think it was five years all the songs that he had and then there was other ones that weren't even released and all that.

What does play out his career? What are the next 15 years of his life like if he lives? Because the amount of music he produced just in the five years was almost unparalleled. Well, I can't say. I can only say hope because he's big, and it is the word hope, because he had two sides of him. And he had a side of him that was really concerned about African-American culture and the inner city and stuff.

And he was going to be a real voice. He would have hit his Marvin Gaye stage if he had did it already. And he had a lot to say and John Lennon. And he's like one of those. So I think anything could have happened, you know? I mean, the music's all out, so people know what he did. But he only made that music in like three or four months. Right.

He recorded like 200 songs or something like that, which is pretty amazing. He was in jail. He came out. Like he had a ton of studio time. When he got out of jail, he went in the studio and just recorded for three or four months, five months, whatever it was, and recorded so much music.

But that didn't account for when he would have been older and maybe seen something. Because he had a great way of expressing the truth. Was your attitude something's going to happen to this guy? I'm worried this is going to the wrong place? I was worried for all of them you know to be honest i was very nervous about them going to vegas all the time because i knew there was a lot of heat in vegas at the time you know and i was always concerned for suge and

all the guys that were going there during that they would go to all the fights. Yeah. And, but you never, you just don't think that's possible. The East Coast, West Coast thing. What was your, as a detached observer, what was your, as it,

as it kept escalating. I never, again, I didn't understand, I didn't understand it because these are people, these are young guys that were making tons of money. They were making tens of millions of dollars a month. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, what's this about?

You know, what's this about? And it just kept escalating. And you keep thinking that it's okay, that it's going to be old. People are just going to go on and, you know, spend some money and have a good time. But it just kept on escalating to a point of complete ignorance. Yeah. Why do you think Dr. J didn't make more music? Because he only puts out what he really loves

and he doesn't like a lot. He's only put his name on three albums his entire career, you know, for our solo records. Put his name on beats. And now he's doing a television series he's recording he's made a a television series for apple right yeah he made it for himself but uh but it's uh it's called uh vital sign it's really good what's your role as somebody when you're close to an artist like that and i mean i would argue that even if he's careful with what

he put out just putting out three albums in 25 years doesn't seem like enough music it's not so what do you do how do you how do you control them you block and tackle man you know what i mean there was a time where it's in the documentary where you know universal told me to get rid of dre because we were down like 15 million dollars or something like that because he wasn't putting his music. I didn't put out Detox. I said, yeah, but I'm going with him. If you want him to go, I'm going. Because I just knew.

I knew he was one of those people that come along every 25 years. Yeah. And I still believe it. I don't think he's anywhere near finished. Okay. What did you think he's anywhere near finished. Okay. What did you think of Straight Outta Compton? I think he nailed it. Hey, Gary Gray, Cube, Dre, all the actors, they killed it.

They got the language right, which is so hard to get in a movie. The script was really, really good. And the language was real. And that was important. That was very very important had some great moments too i had ice cube on the podcast a couple weeks ago and we were just you know that movie just doesn't work unless they nail all three actors and unless they nail the three you know they have to nail dre they have to nail Dre. They have to nail Cube. Yeah. And they have to nail Easy. Yeah. And I was like, I said, I was like, well, you lucked out. You went three for three.

And he's like, it wasn't totally luck. Like we weren't going to make the movie until we knew we had the three. And a lot of movies don't make that mistake. Dre is not afraid of making anything and not putting it out. No matter the cost, the commitment, what doesn't matter. cost the commitment what doesn't matter yeah if he doesn't feel it it could still fail but if he doesn't feel it's not coming out all right let's go backwards so you you get into the music industry like the 72 73 range but are you is it fair to say you were an engineer or were you more than i was was i started out uh you know was and

every recording studio in those days, they'd call you a general or, but that doesn't mean that you're the boss. It's the opposite. You do general work and you get to learn. So there's an engineer and an assistant and a producer in the room and you get to watch them and help them.

Yeah. And then eventually you graduate to a second engineer and uh so what happened was which is in it's actually in a documentary as well is i i used to do everything around the studio clean it up set it up get microphones you know so one day my boss his name was royce akala who owned the studio uh and and his client was John Lennon. And they called me up on Easter Sunday, and they said, we need you to come in and answer the phone. So I'm Catholic, and I live in Brooklyn, and I'm Italian.

And so I said, absolutely. Because I felt, I was so insecure that I felt, I got to work harder than the next guy for me to get anywhere, for me to be useful to any of these people. They don't need me for anything. So I went to my mother i said mom i'm gonna go to work she says no you're not your suit's upstairs church is in an hour and your whole family's coming over here i said mom i'm gonna work right so i left and i got to the studio and i walked in and and john lennon and royce are laughing and they

said well you know uh our assistant engineer just left and we wanted to see if you how much you wanted it so we want you to become the third piece of this thing and it was a you know that was the beginning of my career east of sunday 1973 who's your role model at that point what like you obviously want to get in the industry. Do you even have somebody you're pointing to and saying, I want to be like that guy? No. Well, I liked music. I liked Phil Spector's music, but I didn't want to be like him.

Right, you're a crazy person. No, there was nothing, man. I didn't know anybody. I mean, I knew my father. But your dad said you had just an unbelievable ear for music like the whole time like there was something different about how you heard things i think you know i i turned out when i got into the studio i was finally natural at something and i probably

wasn't afraid of something because what happened was when i used to play sports when i was a kid i was the guy that was like please don't hit it to me right you know you you got the uniforms on you're out there yeah okay hit it to anybody else and uh and it was the opposite when i got into the studio and i started doing my first mixing like i mixed a song called sweet little 616 for john lennon on the rock and roll album i was like hit the ball to me and just my what happened was i, hit the ball to me. And just, what happened was, I said in the documentary, the thing that seems to be landing with young people is, at a certain point, we all have fear. And it's a gigantic headwind.

But at a certain point, if you can flip it and make it a tailwind, it's got massive energy. Massive energy. And it can really get you through a lot. And that's what happened to me. On John's album, in retrospect, when I first realized that that feeling became something that was pushing me forward and into things rather than holding me back. That's pretty cool. Why did young people respond to that?

Young people don't respond to anything. Of course. That's all they responded to. That great they they want they think that's a matter they said wow how'd you do that because i'm frozen yeah i'm frozen expectations they're frozen because they're staring at their phone well how could you not well by the way instagram if i was a kid in brooklyn and i saw all these people on instagram having the greatest time having the greatest girls doing the greatest things the greatest clothes I'd be frozen yeah I'm like how could my life compare to that so I go make up some bullshit and say okay let's go make my life look

interesting you know I mean I don't know how people aren't frozen today I don't know how they do it it's a every kid I walk over to has anxiety and depression i said i i understand how could you not have anxiety or depression when everybody you see on instagram etc is having the greatest life in the world right you know it's a good point you know what i mean it's like oh shit you know uh so that's what they were relating to they were relating to how do i get this monster out from in front of me did you catch john Lennon at a good time in his career? I caught John at a very volatile time in his career. He was 73 to 70, late 75.

Yeah, I was going to say, he had some issues going on, right? It was a long weekend. I came to LA with him. I did three albums with him. Yeah. And it was a tough time for him. But it was also when he was going to court uh being um

trying to get thrown uh nixon was trying to take his green card away yeah don't try to take his visa away i'm not sure if he had a green card yet but um he was going to court every day and coming to the studio after that during walls and bridges and i saw him every day and that was the first time i realized whoa the government isn't always do the right thing i didn't you know i didn't know i was a catholic kid from brooklyn grew up and that was a longshoreman my we were supposed to respect the government respect church everything now all of a sudden this guy that i know is really the truth richard n Nixon's trying to throw him out of the country because of what he's saying. And I was like, that was the first time I started to go,

oh, because I was 19. I was saying, oh, wow. Yeah. It was like, really? Maybe it was late, but that's the first time it hit me. I can't imagine what it would be like to have a president that would act irrationally like that. Yeah, you know.

Tell me more. What was that that like that was exactly right let's stay away from that one so um i'm a springsteen guy i think there's two people in this world there's springsteen guys and then everybody else um i don't know i'm in my 40s so i don't i don't know how he resonates with like people under tate do you care about Springsteen? I mean, yeah. Tommy? Yeah. Okay. I never know with these things, but Born to Run,

which I would still put on the short list of the all-time great albums. It's an incredible album. And it just sounds like he was a maniac making it. I mean, at one point, he almost gave up on it. He was going to do it live like he was the ultimate torture genius he seems like a lot more mellow now than he was in 1975 well he hides it better no i uh it's a bad i'm kidding i'm kidding he um i learned my work ethic from bruce springsteen i grew up you know um thinking you had a job. And you finish your job.

Bruce has never finished. See, John was like a Beatle. So they used to record fast. The Beatles always recorded fast as they made all those albums. So John's thing was like, I'm done in 10 hours, 8 hours. You know what I mean? Bruce is never done so it was like the first time i realized that you just stay in a state of pain until the music's right and i learned that from him and it was an amazing gift

at the time it felt really painful but uh i learned, but I learned my work ethic from Bruce Springsteen. Did you ever worry that he wasn't going to release the album? Well, there's a fabulous story that I'm not sure if it made the movie or not, but what happened was we finished Born to Run. One day we were doing Born to Run and Bruce was like, no drugs. You know, so all we had to stay he was drunk on life he was drunk drunk on intensity yeah energy yeah and so i'm there we're mixing the album and it's like we had eight songs so we had nine days to mix them because he didn't have any money no none of us had any money you know so we had to go he had to go play a gig so we're mixing the album after all

that time and i'm like so like i'm exhausted we're mixing she's the one and i'm up to like it's like two days now where maybe i fell asleep on like a outside for a minute, but it was like coffee and tea and everything you could possibly imagine. Soda, anything with caffeine in it to stay awake. I even tried those trucking pills once, which I hated. And so I go to look at my assistant, and I said, what are you chewing?

He said, it's spearmint. I said, give me that thing. So I took the spearmint gum and I took the gum and I threw it in the garbage and I chewed the aluminum foil. And I don't know if you've ever done that on a cavity. Oh, my God. It woke me up. It was like electric shock.

And I'd mix the record while chewing it. And it was so painful. So we finished the album. Now I have to master it, right? And if you look at any photos of me that day, it was unbelievable. So now he's playing a gig out in, I think it was boston or something i had to take a train i take a five-hour train ride so i mastered the album i get it it's on it's on lacquer and i bring it out to him to play to him so he doesn't have a record player on the road so we go to a

record store that no one knows we don't know what the speakers sound like. We don't know anything, but we also don't know what we're doing. So we go in the record store. He hears it. And, you know, he's, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So we head back to his hotel. It was one of those motel kind of places.

And his room was right outside the pool. He took the lacquer and just threw it in the pool and said, we're doing this over again. And my friend that I took from my old neighborhood had a bunch of Valium with him, and I took it in order to get home. I just said, give me that shit. And I got on the train, and it was just, thank God for John Landau, because he saved the day, and the album finally came out that was always strange to me that somebody who wrote about bruce springsteen ended up becoming his manager and confidant he really didn't know what the equivalent of that

would be now i don't know it's pretty rare he understood him he and he was a great producer landau yeah rand i was a terrific record producer and uh just had an understanding of music that intellectually Bruce really connected with and a love for it. And he was a great resource for Bruce Springsteen. And you did all the Springsteen albums all the way through Tunnel of Love? No. When did you go off? I did two albums. I did Born to Run and Darkness because there was no space for me

on their production team, so I wanted to produce records. So I went from Darkness into Patti Smith. Gotcha. And I did Easter with her. Wait, so you weren't involved at all with Springsteen after that? Not only as friends. I only did those two albums. Because I was an engineer.

And I saw the producer. I went from Patti, then I went into Tom Petty. I did Damned Torpedoes with Tom Petty. Right. And you were responsible for the Patty's, for Because Tonight. Yeah, Because Tonight. It was on Darkness.

It was going to be on Darkness. I know you've told that story a million times, but I like your description of it, how it just felt like it would have resonated more if a girl sang the song. Yeah, it's just very simple. You know, take me, me baby here as i am i just felt if a guy hears a woman sing these song lyrics it can't miss you know and um it um i was right and uh

bruce uh wasn't going to use it on his album, so I just knew it. And Patty finished the verse and just took off from that aggressive theme. You know, and she sings, you know, Desire is hunger is the fire I breathe, love is a banquet on which we feed, which was a kind of very similar kind of vibe where Bruce was going. And my first hit record as a record producer, so it changed my life. Yeah. Let's take a quick break to talk about Miller Lite. Miller Lite is brewed to not only taste great,

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Ask anyone I went to college with. And also, they made great NBA ads and did NBA posters and used a lot of the old Celtics, which was really a way to win my heart in the 1980s. I love Miller Lite. Check it out. Miller Lite. Next time you're buying beer, next time you're going to drink responsibly, go ahead.

Do it. Miller Lite. Back to Jimmy Iovine. Did you think in 1975 Springsteen was going to become the biggest white music star in the world? Man, in 1975. Because it happened nine years later. In 1975, I didn't think it was going to be 1976. Right.

You know, I had no idea. I knew that when it came out that it was big. And I wasn't, you know, I'd never been involved myself with something that was that big and new. Something really not a lot of people knew about. So it was an incredible feeling. And the shows were so incredible. I used to go record the shows as well. Oh my God.

In the truck. Like four and a half hours? All those great bootlegs out, I recorded CW Post and live in Cleveland. Oh, the Hammersmith one? I didn't do England. I didn't go to Europe. I did everyone in America, the Roxy, Bottom Line. And it's just four, four and a half hours every night. No, not in those days. It was two, two and a half hours. I wonder where, I wonder at the first,

the second concert I ever saw was Springsteen like 1980. And he just kept doing encores and like people, he like wore the audience out. People are ready to leave. He was like, I'm coming back again. I got to ask him about that recently. Because my wife and I went to Italy to watch him play. And we stayed with him in Italy. And next morning, he did a four and a half hour show. And next morning, we were having breakfast. And we were talking about exercise and he says you know i i said because he's really he's amazing

shape yeah he's in amazing shape so i'm always talking to him but i don't have the discipline he does i never had a discipline he does he drives me nuts with that discipline thing because he's so incredible at it but i said to him why four and a foreign so i said what about this exercise go look jimmy just don't do anything to hurt yourself so i said what about four and a half hours at 67 years old you know he says well you know i can't help that he says once the audience gets going he's i'm gonna take him on you know what i mean he goes and we're gonna go toe to toe and he just by the way he doesn't even have a set list. He has a set list, but he completely throws it away.

Yeah. And he calls the songs one after the other. I mean, if anyone has a chance to see Bruce Springsteen, they should go see it. Yeah. Well, what's cool about him from 71 to 75, basically, when you hear some of those live, the things, because he would always tell the stories, which I always love love when i was growing up and he does his whole things and there's like you can feel like he knows he has the potential and the people around him know

and you can hear the crowd screaming and like people clearly knew in jersey this guy's a comet that's passing through us and it's going to become something way more special what i want to run was a star to just take over everywhere and then all of a sudden because then he didn't want that though i don't think right wasn't he a little afraid of massive success like that well he was afraid of the way they promoted it was a time of newsweek thing freaked him out and then he went to england and said the future of rock and roll they used john's quote it was right he actually went around ripped them all down yeah you know he was he's an incredible person he just is you know and i i still i'll say it again i don't have anything

to do with his live tours but if anybody has a minute yeah and take your kids so they get inspired like that because that's that's what work looks like and you caught tom petty pretty young i did i tom petty i i that was after patty smith yeah he heard that album and they asked me to get involved in their record and you know i was lucky it was the same exact thing bruce had two albums and the second one didn't do as well as the one before it and so did tom so i went in on their third album so I applied all the principles of Springsteen as far as my work was concerned what are the principles just that you have to just really make everything about that third album and those you know has to be better than

that second album just that much better so you think the third album's the key album in those days yeah making records like that now I don't know what's the third album the first album so many things are confusing right yeah but but in those days it was you built it because there wasn't you know soundcloud you just built it and had to sell every song door to door you got a hit on the radio but so the third album if you got to make a third album, that means you've been touring now for three or four years. And at a certain point, you've got to pull out. You've got to go for the lead. You know what I mean?

And that's the time around the third album. I just had a conversation with Kendrick Lamar at my house about that when he was making this album. That's a great name drop. I really like it. What? No, it's just great. I've always wanted to do a podcast with somebody who said i just had a conversation with kendrick lamar i'm on the edge of my seat now well dre dre signed them to yeah i know to aftermath right so he's at my house and he was doing something with us and he um

i said to him you know you're on your album, because he was on Interscope. Yeah. So now I'm not on Interscope anymore, but him and Top Dog are fantastic. So I said, Kendrick, you're on your third album. First of all, don't make it on the road like everybody's doing their records right now. Take time off and make it, because it's the most important album you're going to make in your young life, in your 20s and 30s because you get this right you'll go rather than if you just if it just if it's just okay and uh he wrote me a note saying

that uh he really appreciated that because it inspired him but he's he's one so you're saying take like three months off before no how much time what's wrong with the music business right now is that artists are convinced that there's no money in recording so they spend all their time on the road yeah so doing shows that means they're not making records so they're spending less time in the studio less time in the studio is going to possibly make inferior records yeah so you think his now that you gave him that advice this next one if he listens to it this next one will be the one no in third album he that's this album out right now oh you gave i thought you gave him that advice

recently oh yeah i'm with you now okay yeah yeah no so did he thank you in the liner notes oh he was so sweet no no no but he wrote me a note. Do they have liner notes anymore? I'm not sure how much it influenced him, but he got it. He got it. And of course, people don't think like that now. They just drop singles and whatever. It's tough. It's tough for artists right now.

It was the rare album that actually felt like an album in 2017. There was a coherence to it. That's what I'm saying. The titles titles look cool you know i had that adele ed sheeran and kendrick people that drake people that take the time off and make the records you can't make the records because somebody in dubai wants to pay you half a million dollars so you go to dubai right leave the studio and go make a record you know and uh and not make a record so that's what i think that's one of the things the record industry suffering from right now people are not putting time into the records that they should you almost can't even call it a record industry anymore it's like a song industry yeah it's our song factory

i want i want to know what all is going on in the world right now where's where's marvin gaye where's i swear to god i was gonna ask you this like because we talked earlier about the 70s and how the music that came out of all these different things that were going on then you saw it again in the 90s why isn't that happening yet i don't know 2016 17 waiting kendrick kendrick absolutely there's a few people but Kendrick has it all. Kendrick has the music, the lyric, the attitude, the idea, the inspiration. Kendrick's got it. Kendrick has that thing that Patti Smith had.

Who else do you think had that that you worked with? Is it a short list? Bono had it. John Lennon had it. Springsteen had it. I've been fortunate to be involved with a lot of people that saw music in a way to move the needle, both socially and popular culture, and read the world and repeated it and spoke for it.

But naturally, the greatest of all time is Bob Dylan. Wow, you're giving him the GOAT title. Oh, yeah. That's easy. Really? Yeah. I'll give you another one. The greatest rhetoric executive of all time, Barry Gordy. Simple.

When Barry Gordy was making records, his artists weren't allowed off the bus down south. And this guy crossed over and made pop music, made urban music acceptable in pop music and took it over. What he did was a miracle. And those records are one better than the other.

None of us after him had that. Yeah. Had to deal with that. And you did, you worked with Stevie Nicks. Yeah, I did Bella Donna. Who, according to my internet research, you also dated. Yeah, I did. For the making of the album.

How long did that relationship last? Well, I was completely a social cripple. And so I had no idea. I had no idea how to do anything socially. So I went out there, meet her, record the record. And she moved into my house. And we made the album. And then-

She was like the iconic rock babe of the late 70s, early 80s. I know you realized that as it was happening. I was so focused on not getting the work right and having a bomb album that I didn't, we didn't go anywhere. Yeah, because that was a weird era, right? Where people didn't even feel like if a woman was in a band, they shouldn't spin off and have their own album.

That's exactly what happened. Fleetwood Mac did not want her to have a whole album. Yeah. Well, why would they want her to become more famous? That means she's just going to leave the band. And the same thing happened on that album with Tom Petty and Stop Dragging My Heart Around. That was Tom's song.

I just did the same trick. Oh, now I, yeah. Did the same trick yeah do the same trick twice yeah yeah yeah so fleetwood mac i've always been obsessed with i know you weren't involved with rumors but i still think that's the most interesting album that's ever come out just because of all the weird relationships that were involved that's the only thing one that's one of those albums like Born to Run that would make an incredible stage play. Yeah, you're right. Could you have the behind the scenes stuff in it? Excuse me?

I mean, everyone's dating everybody and then they make all the songs are about the failed relationships. That's what the play would be, right? So you would have scenes, songs, and then scenes of the... I don't know. That'd be interesting. I'm not doing it, but somebody should. That's a good idea. Yeah.

And then you did U2, Under the Blood Red Sky. Under the Blood Red Sky. Which I wore to the ground on my... Was it 8-track back in 83? It was 8-track, right? Yeah, it was some 8-tracks involved in that. And what happened was I was down in the dumps and I started to become a producer that was producing established artists and I couldn't get any younger artists because the label I was too expensive or whatever labels.

Yeah. They thought I had too much influence or, you know. Yeah. So I was working with Bob Seger and Stevie Nicks who were great and Dire Straits who were great, but I wanted a new artist. And my ex-wife called me, was at the Us Festival. Actually, she was working for Westwood One and she was covering it.

And she goes, there's a guy down here you've got to see. And I flew down and I saw you two playing the Us Festival. So it's like 1982? The Us Festival. Yeah. And I followed them to Ireland

and I tortured them until they worked with us. I mean, that was like a great era to torture you too. Then I did Rattle and Hum with them five years later. I was going to ask you about that. Because I was in college when that came out. And coming off the Joshua Tree, that was about as anticipated of a next album. Yeah, so they kind of took a left turn.

I can remember. It was smart what they did. They took a left turn. They went to they went to live sort of studio album combined smart what they did because you look back on that album that album is actually a great

album oh it's loaded people were like weirdly a tinge disappointed with it when it came out because they couldn't win with whatever they released that's right but you go back and listen now that desire is an incredible angel harlem oh yeah we went all over the country to record that album you know there's a really good documentary about them that not a lot of people have seen about the couple years after they made that album when they almost broke

up and then they ended up going to germany and it was kind of that fork in the road moment that a lot of bands have yeah that was they've had some success and it's either going to keep going that was after rattling home yeah look i stopped producing records after i started interscope that's how hard that record was to make that's how hard rattling home was yeah it was brutal it just finished you for me yeah yeah they as bono would say they and he said it in the documentary he said well we broke him i couldn't do i i just i i just i said i'm done when it's hard is it because the group's fighting with each other is it because they're being perfectionist what makes it hard you want you can't get what you want then you won't settle for something that unless it's what you want and

bono and the band are really like that and to a certain extent I'm like that but as the producer it's all going through you all the energy is going through you the music's going through you so you you know you're getting hit with all of it and that album I was at that moment I was producing records for about 15 years already and I said you know what? Then I heard them talking and saying, they didn't ask me to do the follow-up album. Yeah. But I think it was Octoon Baby.

Octoon Baby is the next one. And I heard them saying they were going to go to Berlin to record it. I said, I'm not going to Berlin. You're like, I'm out. Good luck, guys. They didn't ask me, but I said, even if they asked me, I'm not going to Berlin. So I started a record'm out. Good luck, guys. They didn't ask me, but I said, even if they asked me, I'm not going to Berlin. So I started a record company, and it was Interscope.

So that kind of worked out. When you start a record company, what happens? Did you do it with your own money? Did you have a partner? No, no, no. Ted Field. How'd you do it? My partner, Ted Field, put the money up. I brought some money in from Atlantic Records with that.

I was getting a deal. So we brought that money together. And Tom Wally and John McClain were working for TED. And we started Interscope. And it just, there was something about the combination of the people that just caught fire. And it became like, it was one thing after the other. It just kept working, you know. How much of it was being shrewd and how much of it was luck?

You know, I think that, I got to be honest with you, there were some talented people at Interscope. Yeah. John McClain's an extraordinarily talented person. I found Dr. Dre for Outboard Man. Tom Wiley, who discovered Tupac, really talented. And Ted was very talented. So I'd have to say that the Interscope people

was a really good team. Probably a different element of characters with Inderscope, like some unsavory characters like we talked about earlier, like some of the people that they ran around with. Did you ever think, not that your life was in danger, but did you ever think like, oh shit, I'm a little worried about myself here? There were times where it was scary you know because it's not just the guys it's the guys the hang around guys all the guys that are trying to get to the guys

you know what i mean and then all of a sudden east coast west coast breaks out and you got a mess and uh you know it's music but at that time i don't think there's ever been anything like that in the history of the music business and this documentary covers it like crazy it really shows that whole thing and that era in episode 3 really powerfully and it

directed it a good job because it was it was scary it was dangerous it was great it was awesome and there were certain things that were horrible so like a lot of and then we had marilyn manson and trent resner at the same time as well so we had we had it from both sides and then time warner that's when they uh the government came out against us and time warner um we were able to get out of our deal and move over to Universal

because they didn't want to put the music out. How did you get involved with Geffen? Geffen's just been a friend. John Landau, Springsteen introduced me to Geffen and he's been an older brother. Actually, David taught me everything I know about business. Geffen taught me. So you're still good with Geffen?

Oh, yeah. Because people are either all in or all out on him. I'm all in all the time, always, forever. I've never thought about it. He's the greatest, man. He's smart as anything. He still is. And he taught me really the art of business.

Because it's an art form. The really good guys, it's an art form. Give me like two tips um bank of america no uh two two good lessons from him well you know um it's funny um he he there's a lot like for example when i was going through that whole thing at time warner and i i thought we're going to get thrown out he looked at me very calmly and said you are not that lucky because he knew what they were doing was bullshit yeah based on lyrics it was a it was a red herring

it was nonsense so he kind of calmed me down i said wait getting out's a good thing okay let me get out because then you still got the company yeah so um but he's always there on stuff like that always chessboard stuff clear just the shortest distance between any two spaces is david geffman you know and um he's an awesome guy in this area. So you and Dre do Beats. Beats takes off. Then eventually you, like many other people, saw the potential of a streaming company. You start that and then Apple eventually buys everything.

Yeah. And now you're still in charge of Apple Music, right? Yeah, I'm in charge of Apple Music with a bunch of people. So what's your inner circle? How many people are actually running this thing? Apple Music? Well, there's probably four or five people that are doing it together, the senior people,

but then there's a lot of people that work there naturally. And we're trying to build something with elegance. We're trying to build a relationship between the audience and the artist that brings some elegance through because the competition is free music and it's uh you can't you have to bring something to the party the service has to be of service yeah that's the reason to grab you in to say okay he's helping me if we're not helping you why are you going to sign up when you could just go get the music for free? What's the best criticism that has been levied about Apple Music in the last two years? Well, in the early days, the UI was very complicated and it's not anymore. That was true. And we fixed it. That's one of them them and that was the main one the ui was just

not right do you feel like there has to be a winner in this streaming thing or can 10 people be doing it at the same time no streaming has to be a winner we're not sure about that yet okay there's only 100 million people on streaming of course there's a free tier the fight the streamings issue now it is so worth ten dollars a month to get all the music in the world if you use it there's so much depth in there we have things like i just go in and i i we have a whole um radio segment right where i just patch in my favorite bob dylan song and it plays me a different radio station every day that is so awesome because we also have human curators where we make the list we have people to make the list personally yeah and um so apple music is very very very musical and um so it's worth it but it's hard to explain to people

that you know music is if it's, why am I paying for it? Well, you're selling it to at least the under 30 generation, like these two guys over here, they're used to not paying for stuff. That's right. And being able to cut corners and sneak around and get through this or go in this link.

And now you're getting it. That's why you have to be of service. You have to be great. You have to hook them through. So you're trying to do it through like djs no no different channels through curation we have a thing on the service called for you which every day when you wake up there's new music for you like for example they just i've seen that i've always ignored it on my oh no i'll play you mine from today i'll play you mine from today

and um here's mine from today You ever play music on here? On what? On the radio, on your podcast. We can't. We can't license it, right? We can't, no. Look, here's what, this is crazy. This is what it served me today. Stevie Nicks?

No. Oh. What it thinks that I'm going to like. Apple Music, so here it starts with this. Springsteen. Right, then it starts with this. Springsteen. Right. Then it goes to this.

Ramones. I'm going to be sitting here. Okay. Then it goes to this. Then it goes to this. So that knows you really well. Then it goes to this. And then it goes to this and then it goes to this wow okay that thing knows you and it keeps going so i'm saying it knows me and that is what we're really working on make your life easier

and give you like that playlist i know tomorrow morning I will be swimming with this playlist. Can you win and Spotify can win at the same time? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, if streaming wins, we all win. There's plenty of room, man. There's plenty of room. I think streaming is going to win. The thing I can't figure out is the subscription stuff.

That's what I'm calling streaming. Because we're seeing in the digital media. No, streaming is one. Subscription's got to win. I phrased it wrong. Because we're seeing in the digital streaming is one subscription's gotta win i phrased it wrong because we're seeing it with uh you know digital media and you're seeing now newspapers like the wall street journal and the washington post streaming is they figured it out it's will subscription music win and i you know i'm hopeful what would be the biggest obstacle to it winning other than young people free The labels have licensed their music for free.

Where do you see podcasts fitting into this whole thing? Podcasts, we are starting to do them on Apple Music, you know, and I think podcasts are really interesting and great ways to learn things and understand. And, you know, on-demand stuff is fantastic. So we're very bullish on podcast at apple okay because if you they control like 70 of them basically like i think for most people's downloads i know with ours it's definitely like probably 70 get them through itunes oh yeah well we're bullish

on them you know we're gonna take it a little more serious as well once we get so much to do so all these great people you worked with is there a common common thread with what made them great when you think about like springsteen and dre and john lennon and bono is there there's something the lack of compromise lack of compromise yeah they will not compromise that's it period you couldn't buy rent Bruce Springsteen

you can't there's nothing there's nothing that you have that he wants and that's the most frightening thing in the world so this documentary

is July 9th HBO HBO four parts like four days in a row how are they doing it four days in a row four days in a row? How are they doing it? Yeah, four days in a row.

Four days in a row. Yeah. This is great because there's never anything on in July. July is like when sports dies except for baseball and all this, you know. Yeah, I mean. There's very rarely anything going on. I think it's meant to inspire, you know, and it's very truthful. What's the most embarrassing thing you can say about Eddie Q in this podcast?

Cause he might be listening. I've known him for a while. So you could be mean if you want. Eddie Q, there's a lot of embarrassing things I could know. He's a beast, you know, he's a, I live down near him in Cabo as well, you know, and I work with him all the time. And he's like, he's in your face. He's just a guy that just tells you the way he feels it.

You know what I mean? He's a beast of a guy and a great guy. And a guy from Silicon Valley, he's really, he's a lot like a content guy. He breathes and he feels like a very creative, artistic person because he has a great feel for what you're doing. And he's a sports fanatic. I find him to be very lucky that he's the guy that bought our company.

So what do the next five years look like for you? Oh, man, I'm 64 years old, man. You know know what i'm saying i just want them to be there right now that's what they look like jimmy thank you that was fun all right all right all right thanks so much to jimmy ivy and thanks so much to daryl morey don't forget we're to run something else with him on the Ringer NBA show, so look out for that. Thanks to CreditWise from Capital One. Remember, the CreditWise app helps you track the key factors

that keep your credit health in shape. With CreditWise, you can check your TransUnion credit report at any time for signs of error, theft, or fraud. The app will also send automatic email alerts when your credit report changes. Download the free CreditWise app today. Don't forget House of Carbs, Joe Haas' new food podcast, which is going to be absolutely extraordinary. It's launching this week.

Nephew, when are we launching it? Like, could be tonight, tomorrow? Could be late tonight, tomorrow, yeah. Could be late tonight. Could be dropping after you hear this podcast. Could be tonight tomorrow could be late tonight could be dropping after you hear this podcast could be tonight could be july 4th fireworks coming out of your belly um house of carbs subscribe on itunes spotify google play soundcloud wherever you listen to them very excited for this podcast and also since we're talking about podcasts cousin sal's against all odds the podcast this week the july 4th one we're interviewing

matt stoney the degenerate trifecta and cousin sal they do the uh they went to the captain morgan's make-believe casino and tried to figure out who would win a fight on july 4th between mr miyagi and rambo and it's one of the great five minutes in podcast history. It's really spectacular. Rambo was a minus 750 favorite. And I would just say that three of the four people went with the underdog. The reasons were spectacular. I was very jealous.

I'm very jealous of the Make Believe Casino in general. It's a great idea. I might just steal it. I might just start doing them for my podcast too. Anyway, check that out. Enjoy July 4th. Be responsible with fireworks. Watch your kids around the fireworks

and don't eat too much. Be back on Wednesday with a full free agency recap. Hopefully Gordon Hayward has picked a team by then. That's it for the BS podcast I wanna see them on the way so I never say I don't have a few years with

them on the way so I never say I don't have a few years with them