The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz - Hour 1: Meadowlark Hodge Podge

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Stugotz is very disappointed to not be interviewing Jake Plummer about mushrooms, but mails it like only he can by texting in a question. Then, Amin and Charlotte preview the NBA Playoffs with the play-in games set to finish tonight, Matt Barnes joins Pablo Torre Finds Out and David Samson tackles the Arizona Coyotes move to Salt Lake City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to Giraffe King's Network. Six months, 82 games, and finally the postseason is here. First up, the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament. For this, the rules are simple. Win to get in. Eight teams battle to earn their playoff spot in a win or go home style tournament that is bound to be full of highlights, excitement, and drama. There's no better way to set the tone for the playoffs than this.

So make sure you don't miss the action. Watch TNT's coverage of the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament on April 16th and 19th on TNT, TruTV, and Max. Hi, can I take your order please? Can I get a Big Mac McWrap McFlurry and a McDouble? Keep it real I need a Happy Meal McCrispy and 10 McNuggets Tasty garden fries a cold drink with extra ice Junior chicken would be fire and a sweet hot apple pie

Is that it? Let me get a quarter pound of a cheese and flare a fish show please McGriddas a McMuffin and a largefish. Oh, please make grittas of muffin in the large coffee a hamburger cheeseburger hot brown high-cake vanilla cone shake and hot dog sunny This is the Dan LeBattor show with the StuGuts podcast StuGuts is bumming that he's not here right now because he was dying to just invite Jake the Snake Plumber to tour with him with the Grateful Dead so that he could wander around saying look at me and Jake Plumber, just a couple of snakes cutting it up. That's all he wanted to do with this.

But Jake, since your career ended, and I should tell the audience, he was a pro bowler in 2005, you have been most associated, I think, in word association with being one of the nation's foremost mushroom advocates. You're here for that, right? You like that this is, that you have found something that makes you feel better and that you are one of the foremost advocates for it, right, and thank you for joining us. Yeah, well, first, thanks for having me on the show.

Again, it's always great to join you guys. My journey's taken me a lot of different ways, but one that was really profound was, through the use of nature and natural ways of healing, first with, you first with cannabis, differentiating between CBD and marijuana, advocating, educating on that. I now have another opportunity here through some close friends that are in the know and sent me some tinctures, got me out in the woods looking for, obviously, four organisms, looking for fungi out in the trees. This has become

really an amazing journey just to again carry on and try to help people feel better, whatever that means. We're not going to talk about curing anything or eliminating any of your ailments or disease because we can't. There's no studies being done yet but man it's sure nice to feel better each day and have more focus, more energy, sleep better at night. And that's what these wonderful fungi have provided me. So I have to get out there and share this because I know there's a lot of people out

there struggling with their health. And I have a whole lot of buddies that are going down that route post-career, physical dysfunction, cognitive decline, and I wanna get serious about it. So as we grow with Umbo, we're gonna be able to go do some of this serious work and get some of these clinical studies done and figure out if there's a way to reverse some of these trends that really don't give much hope for these guys in the long run.

He's the co-founder of Umbo, and he's an actual mushroom farmer. I'll get into the details of mushroom farming with you in a second, but can you take us, when you tell us about your journey, can you take us through how much football hurt and how much mushrooms or how much you were seeking something that alleviated pain? Yeah, you know, football was always something I love to do. I love playing ball. I mean, recess and grade school, we were playing tackle football. I also played a lot of other sports.

I play even still today, dabble in a lot of different sports, yet I don't put the pads on because I think if I got hit and had to land on my back, I don't think I'd get up from the pain, you know, just that my body, I'm not in daily pain, but just the body doesn't move like that anymore. And I'm okay with that. I've come to accept being 49, at what stage I'm in, I still get around really well. I played a lot of games.

I played 14 years straight from ASU, then into the league, starting halfway through my rookie year, played a lot of games and I played through a lot of pain, I played through injuries I probably should have taken a break and sat down and like let it heal instead I pushed through it, I pushed the pain down, I depressed it down to where now I can get up and have a low-grade headache, maybe a little arthritis in my ankle and I can go about my day

and be just fine. Although I'm kidding myself if I'm saying I'm just going to be fine because there's days that that pain wears on me, wears on my nerves, it makes me a little less patient, makes me short, kind of mudgy and grumpy sometimes, and I don't like that. So through my post-career, you know, dealing with those, those kind of things settling in as I'm not getting the treatment and getting, you know, working out all the time and doing the things that we did as, as athletes, I started to feel my body. And that's when, you know, nature came in with, with first Sharps Webb and CBD, and then the opportunity to start using functional mushrooms. You know, we differentiate

between gourmet mushrooms that you can cook and you can eat, functional mushrooms, and then medicinal mushrooms, which I like to say are the ones that we talk about for psychedelics or hallucinogens. And there's some true healing powers there also, and studies being done, a lot of leading universities around the country to find out what this organism can provide for us in our society that has a lot of mental health issues. But for physical health, I felt like these things really helped clear my body of the lingering inflammation,

give me that hope of a longer, more vital, with more vitality, more longevity to carry on down the path as I age. Cause we all are gonna age. It's just whether you do it gracefully or not. So I wanna age well and be active long into my 80s, 90s, even hopefully into my hundreds. And this has given me the hope for that. You are speaking spiritually, organically, holistically, but your mushroom hat says

you like to party. Yeah this was a gift from my family. My wife and kids gave me this for my birthday. So the good old Amanita, which you know was thought of to be a deadly poisonous mushroom, but there are a lot of people that are experimenting, doing their own research with it and finding out that it has a lot of benefits for the human body. So yeah, if this says I like to party, so be it. I'm a fun guy when you get down to it.

Now I appreciate all the important things that mushrooms are doing for people, all the healing it's doing. But if we're just trying to have fun with some mushrooms, would you say a movie, a concert, or just staring at a tree in your backyard? What's the best thing to do on mushrooms? That's interesting.

You know, you're asking someone who holds these organisms with high reverence. So I had dabbled in my past with some psilocybin and gone to a concert, had a great time. Oh my God, the colors, the sounds, all of that. I've also, I don't know if I've ever had them and watched a movie. It'd be hard to focus, I think. But I know that there's times when I do, if you know decide to use them nowadays or if I take a little Microdose and go out into the woods. It is fun and it's entertaining and it's so good for my soul to sit and just like get to know a tree or

Watch a bug fly around and wonder like does that bug have depression or is it? Did they have to get food ready for its kids today? Or you know, it just makes you kind of let go of society's You know all these limitations and all these expectations and when you go there You can kind of just let it go and be be who you are be one with wherever you're at whatever you're doing I don't discourage anybody from From they'll getting curious and checking these organisms out. As far as the psychedelics are concerned, I just feel like they're so sacred and they're

meant for deep healing that I really don't use them that much to just go party with. You know? Well, your company sells functional mushrooms, not psilocybin. Psilocybin is still illegal. How often are you making the distinction between those two things? Like, do you do you partake functionally, both functionally and illegally? Or what are you doing there? How are you doing the distinctions? Well, you know, let's be sure like there's no people think that we've

legalized psilocybin here in Colorado, we just decriminalized it, which means if you have it on your possession, you won't be, you'll have to fear prosecution. So that's a necessary amount. If you got like 15, you know, 15 pounds of this stuff, you're running around trying to like sell it off. That's, that's a criminal offense still. So, uh, but Umbo, Umbo Functional Mushroom Company, we are focused on performing and recovering and kind of athletic centric since me and our other co-founder, Rashad Evans, come from a field of athleticism and training

and beating our bodies up. So we know really how well these things work for us. We provide a bar that's really tasty in two different flavors. We got a drink that we're just getting out beta testing. That's a hydration drink full of all kinds of goodies with no sugar added, just fruit juice. We have liquid tinctures that are in glycerin with the extracts that some of the mushrooms grown out of Michael Love Farm, my farm out in Fort Lupton. We're extracting them and using them

at a really potent level with very good bioavailability. Now, that means it's gonna be absorbed into your body. You don't just take a big pill and then it goes through your track and you end up flushing it down the toilet. This stuff's gonna assimilate into your body and work. So, getting into this has been a lot of fun. I wanted to have a really good product that's high standard of integrity behind it and doing

it for the right reasons. Umbo is going to grow and become a great company. It already is on track. And I don't want to feel like I'm profiting off of nature. So what we're doing is a study we have coming up with former players here locally because that's where we got to start with guys that have heard about it and the guys I know to test and see if functional mushrooms can help with cognitive decline and physical dysfunction. So we're running some of our own research so that we can get the data to give to

these other to give it out to the public to say hey hey, this is working. This is what this is doing. This is how this is helping athletes that are going down the rabbit hole of arthritis and looking at the future of possibly having CTE, which some people don't even know how to say what CTE is, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, yet they're scared shitless of it because it's like,

that's not a future you wanna look forward to. So rather than just feel that, go for your total and permanent disability, get your concussion settlement, which some of these guys need. Granted, they need the money, they need to do it. I want to reverse that trend. I want to strike up a new narrative, flip the status quo and say, hey, here's an option for you if you don't want to be disabled. If you still want to be able to run around and be a badass like we were when we were on the field on Sundays, we can still do that in our lives

when we're 60, when we're 70, when we're 80. Let's see, let's see what the future holds. Jake, I'm a functional mushroom user. I take Lion's Mane, I take Turkey Tail. Is there something else I should be adding to my mushroom cocktail daily? I believe really strongly in reishi. Gan know ganaderma lucidum is one strain but reishi is man it's like it's like the swiss army knife it's got so many possibilities we

don't know much about it we know that it's good for your nervous system it's a great great one to add in the evenings to induce a state of calm, kind of like a warm blanket for your nervous system. But Reishi also helped me with my allergies because it has a compound called Ganaderic acid that is a natural antihistamine. So we're diving into these things. We know so little here in Western culture. Over in the Eastern medicine, China and Japan, they've been studying these things for a long, long time, for centuries. So we're just getting into this and we got to get the data back.

That's why I'm excited to do this research. But Reishi is one of my favorites. I think it's just so good for what we deal with day to day, the amount of stress we put ourselves under. Our lives are busy, busy, busy. And Reishi has a way to just kinda like, take a big deep breath and just relax. And you don't feel high, you're not like,

cannabis can do that too, but then you're high. And maybe you don't wanna feel high. Not everybody wants to get high and ripped up every night. But maybe you wanna have that same calmative effect and Rashi does a really good job of that. Are you someone who has read a great deal about timothy leary i've read a few works by timothy leary yeah i mean what an amazing human i'm just curious where you come about you know being someone who has decided to go counterculture right

because i don't know how well any of this was received in the conservative environment you came up in in football. It's still not really well received by, you know, going to owners or the guys way up top. But when you talk to the nutritionists on these teams, the players are wanting it. Players want a natural way to feel more energy. That's why we introduced them to cordyceps. Cordyceps mushrooms, the 1993 Chinese women's track team, they were training and they went and broke a bunch

of world records and they got accused of using steroids and their coach said, no, we've just been using cordyceps. It comes from the Himalayas. It's a caterpillar fungus, Himalayan Viagra, whatever you want to call it, Himalayan Viagra, whatever you want to call it, it comes by all these names, but it increases blood flow and VO2 max. So when you speak to the language of these nutritionists and they have players that are wondering

how they can have more energy, how they can sleep and recover better at night, they don't want to take Ambien and go to sleep. They know the side effects. They've seen and heard and probably had relatives that have either had extreme illnesses caused by some of these pharmaceuticals or themselves have dealt with the side effects. So those are the guys that once you get them seeking this, then we want to be able to provide it in a good way with someone they can trust,

because not all the products out there are created equally. 420 is this weekend. Do you celebrate? Does the mushroom community celebrate? I mean, we're in celebration every day, just to be alive, to wake up, take a breath and see what the day holds. I mean, we celebrate every day,

because when you're in it so much so that you realize that you can't control anything at all, except the way you react to what is put in front of you, then you start to really enjoy all those moments and even the tough moments that come and go and you learn from them. So 420 out here in Colorado is huge. You know, it's a big deal because this is one of the first states to legalize marijuana. So it's gonna be, there'll be a lot of people out partying and doing their thing. I've gotten to a point where

something like cannabis is used occasionally. I love to have a hit and go play handball or go play pickleball. It feels good for my body. It lets my mind go, okay, I got nothing to do today but chase around a little ball and have fun and laugh and enjoy myself. But when I use it, you know, other than that, it's kind of like, you know, I want to do it with some reverence and have a sacred something sacred behind

it rather than just, yo, let's get high and see what's up. So I like to party. I like to have fun, but you know I enjoy also being just sober and in the moment and really enjoying what I got going on in my life because everything just keeps coming to me and it's just been a great journey so far realizing really what I'm here for to bring this knowledge, to be a conduit of this ancient knowledge, to bring it to the people, to bring it to the ones that are curious and wanting to feel better and take their health back into their own hands.

In the same vein of trying to help people and give people advice when it comes to mushrooms, I would recommend seeing Oh by Cirque du Soleil on a lot of mushrooms because it was life altering for me. Hey, you know, that's, you know, you can go see something like that, that you wonder like, how did they create that? And you think, were they just that creative or were they tripping balls when they made that? You know, like, were they tripping when they created that show?

Maybe so. Or maybe they had a journey in the medicine and it opened their mind up to not have any limitations on art and creativity. And there's real beauty in nature. Everything we are comes from nature, and we're going to go back to that. And so when you're using natural products and you're enjoying them and having intention behind them,

you're opening yourself up for a lot of good times. And that may be going to Cirque du Soleil with a little bit of psilocybin and letting those colors even penetrate you even deeper than you thought they could. Hell yeah. Put it on the poll please, Juju, at LeBretard's show, were the people who had the thought to do O

at Cirque du Soleil tripping balls. We actually have a question from Stu Gotz, our co-host, who is not here in the most lazy way possible. He texted a question from Stu Gotts, our co-host who is not here in the most lazy way possible. He texted a question. So he said, I wanted to invite Jake to a Dead in Company show at the Sphere. He wrote Fear. He met the Sphere.

At the Sphere in Las Vegas. I'll bring the tickets. He brings the mushrooms. A couple of snakes cutting it up. Oh man. I am down, I'm definitely down, but I have only one request, that we're not trapped in a bubble on the planet Earth.

Instead, maybe we could go to an outdoor concert somewhere where we could actually breathe fresh air and see a bird fly by. So red rocks. No to the sphere, no. Red rocks, yeah, okay. What about fear? Fear? Yeah. Fear is a crazy thing, man. Yeah, we could go deep there. You know, there's a lot of fear in the world.

You know, I try not to fear things because where there's fear, there's danger and you know, you got to have your tap back into your heart and your intuition, you know, if something, honor that. Sometimes fear is good, time to run. And someone asked me last, yesterday, when I was talking with the guys at All the Smoke, we were talking about, why were you, you were fast, man. You were out there running, you were quick. And what was that? Were you always super quick and fast?

I said, no, that was fear. I was scared shitless those guys were gonna get me, man. I was just trying to run away from them as quick as I could. So yeah, fear has its positives to check out Jake plumbers mushrooms at get umbo.com it's you mbo. umbo.com. Thank you, Jake. Appreciate the time. Hey, thank you guys. Always great to come share. Appreciate the opportunity and y'all keep theall keep up the good work out there. Thank you, sir.

All right, peace, love, and mushrooms. Six months, 82 games, and finally the postseason is here. First up, the SoFi NBA play-in tournament. For this, the rules are simple. Win to get in. Eight teams battle to earn their playoff spot in a win or go home style tournament that is bound to be full of highlights, win to get in. Eight teams battle to earn their playoff spot in a win or go home style tournament that is bound to be full of highlights, excitement and drama.

There's no better way to set the tone for the playoffs than this, so make sure you don't miss the action. Watch TNT's coverage of the SoFi NBA Play-In Tournament on April 16th and 19th on TNT, TruTV and Max. Don LeBretard. Number three, Chick-fil-A waffle fries. Love it. Nah, I think it's an overrated fry. You guys go ketchup or Chick-fil-A sauce when you have the Chick-fil-A.

Polynesian sauce. Polynesian. That's my brother right there. Good call. You're my brother. Stugats. Oh my god. What a weird interaction. White guys! Wa-wa-wa-wa-wa-white! Wow. This is the Dunn-Levatar Show with the StuGuts! Welcome back. I mean, today is a very special day because we have yet another new segment,

which is just always very exciting. You love it. Look at you. You light up. We get new segments every day now. I feel like I feel like a kid on Christmas every single day. What do we got today? Let's see.

I'm going to unwrap this first Christmas present. Oh, this is a game called One on One. Oh my God. One on God's green earth is that graphic. That's Oh my God. What on God's green earth is that graphic? That's, oh my God. This, anyone who says AI is coming for our jobs? No, no it's not. Not with this.

These look like the mannequins that they practice cutting hair on. Oh God. If you're not, if you're not watching, if you're listening to this only, go check that out. Thank you to our production team. Really great work, everybody. This is a game

where we pit two stories against each other and we can only choose one of them to talk about. We have two minutes to talk about it. First is Kawhi getting that last Team USA roster spot for the Olympics versus Blake Griffin retiring. What do you choose? I like this is like a very clipper, What do you choose? I like this is like a very clipper heavy topic. I'm going with Blake Griffin retiring, man. Shout out to Blake, Quake Griffin. I don't know. I learned earlier today that many of the people

who work on this show are infants and we're not alive when things happen, but there was a time when every time Blake Griffin did something on a basketball court, it was so ridiculous. There was a blog called quakegriffin.com and you just log in and you would find the highlights of what he did, whether it was dunking on Timofey Mozgov

or Kedrick Perkins or whoever, or whatever was the thing that he did last night because every single night he did something ridiculous and amazing. He was a six time All-Star, five time All-M amazing. He was a, a six time all star, five time all NBA. He was rookie of the year. He won the slam dunk contest. He kind of brought the energy back to the slam dunk contest after it kind of took a, a lull there for a little bit.

Well this guy was, was one of my favorite players when he played, but you know what else Charlotte, one of the funniest, one of the funniest guys matter of fact, when I went to the comedy store at the beginning of this season, and I asked a bunch of stand-up comics, including the roast master general himself, Jeff Ross, who is the funniest athlete out there? It was unanimous, everyone said Blake Griffin.

Well, even his retirement announcement was hilarious. He said, I never thought I'd be a kind of writing a letter to basketball guy when I retired, And then he wrote a letter to basketball and he signed it and he wrote, wait, am I that guy? I also want to give a shout out to Blake Griffin on the Celtics when he would get in to the end of a game and announcers would act as though like this is a feat of strength they'd never seen before. They'd be like, this guy's 35, he's sweating a lot, he's breathing hard, but he's out there. And he would have been out there for like 11 minutes. And I was like, okay, you're sweating a lot, he's breathing hard, but he's out there and he would have been out there

for like 11 minutes and I was like, okay, you're going a little hard, but I felt like Blake of all people could take it, I mean. I also wanna give a shout out to his brother, Taylor Griffin, Taylor played for us in Phoenix and has been one of the behind the scenes guys working with his brother for the last few years. So shout out to the entire Griffin family, we love you.

Thanks for everything. What's next? I I don't know what do we have okay we've got ooh finals picks versus Bobon okay so if you can't pick Denver or Boston to be in the finals Charlotte who would you pick oh okay? Or we can talk about Bobon intentionally missing a free throw to give his crowd chicken. Oh yeah, absolutely that. I am not terribly interested in making any picks for the finals. I am very interested in talking about Bobon missing these free throws. Okay, so to give people context, the Clippers have this promo, which a lot of teams have this promo. When the opponent misses two free throws

in the fourth quarter Everybody gets free chicken or a free chicken sandwich or whatever and so Boban having played for the Clippers before he's in the end of This game. We know the Rockets season is going nowhere We know the Clippers sad everybody's gave me his meaningless So he said you know what man my free throw percentage be damn I'm gonna give everybody here free chicken. And so he missed them both and kind of like looked to the crowd and almost said like, you're welcome.

He pointed. I feel like he said, this is for you or something. He said something very bo-bunny. You know what I mean? I, on the one hand, I'm like, oh my God, I like hurt inside watching him do this because I was like, oh, what are you doing? And then on the other hand, I was like, this is, this is incredible. He is the greatest, but there is no one better than Bobon at playing the role of the crowd, the fan favorite. He's like the face of the NBA when it comes to being goofy. And I don't think that we talk about that enough in sports. I think every league needs to have the goofy one

and there needs to be an award at the end of the year. And I think that Bobon should get it. I think if there was any player that I could pick to have his life and his career, it might be Bobon. Yes, more than Steph Curry, more than LeBron and all those guys, because those guys have pressure and there are people who hate them and they get hate mail and you know, things spray painted on their property.

Everybody loves Bobon. This guy's been in John Wick. He's got a goldfish commercial. He's got a chime commercial. He's got a state farm commercial. He gives the people free chicken. Everybody loves Bobon and to be in that place where you are universally loved. There's not a single basketball fan out there who's like, boo, Bobon.

Dude, that guy is golden in every city he walks into. And now he's the king of chicken. So watch out, John Calipari. Um, OK, what? The chicken people got him. Remember, the chicken people got him. Tyson Chicken got him in Arkansas. OK, so next up, we up we have Wendy's shoes.

Vinter Guamonama had a shoe designed by AI and Nike or John T. Porter's lifetime ban from the NBA for betting on himself. All right. I do want to talk about this. I do want to say that John T. Porter getting banned for life is exactly the system working. They found someone. By the way, they found someone who was betting the unders on already shitty numbers, right?

So the fact that they detected it wasn't like someone high key doing stuff, this would be the most subtle thing. And they still caught it, they still found him, and they suspended him, banned him for life. Let that be a lesson to anybody else who wants to mess around. It is a privilege to play in this league, and I'm glad that the league took a hard line

on such a doofus move by Jontay Porter, but I don't wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about these damn shoes, man. Show me these shoes. I'm going to describe these shoes in case someone is not watching this. These are they look like a sock. They look like if you tried to make a spaceship out of a sock and then shrink it down to the size of a shoe, they are all white. I don't even fully know where your foot goes because they have this

little orange thing that looks like molten lava that I think is supposed to be like an air, like, you know, the air maxes or whatever, but it looks like something stuck in there. And I feel like if you put these shoes on, like your feet are going to disintegrate. I feel like these are lava shoes. I don't know that I trust them. That being said, Nike, if you want to sponsor me, I will. You can have my first born.

I'm going to say this, first of all, like we started this segment for all the people who think the A.I. is coming for all of our jobs. I think we have some time. That's what I'm going to say. I think we've got time before that Skynet goes active. Eventuality happens. So Cyberdyne Systems is not walking through that door, not quite yet.

Second of all. I just have questions. It just, the weirdest thing was the unveil for his logo was like universally loved. Everyone was like, oh, Nike's back with cool ads again and cool logos and we're about to be cool again and then this shoe comes out and I'm just like Yeah, the logo was so cool. The logo was the alien

Yeah, but like they went a little too far with the alien. I mean look, hey, here's the deal Charlotte What maybe Nike sends us? Pairs of these I wear a size 11 in men's. Nine and a half women's. There you go. I also have a child that wears nine and a half women's as well. So if you want to send that I can. And then we can like, you know what? I'm a big believer like pictures and videos. No, I need physical. So Nike, just send me the physical thing. I'll put them on, I'll try them on, my kid will try them on.

We'll let you know. And you know what? We might be wrong. Maybe AI has come for all of our jobs. You know, I'm willing, I'm also, I'm gonna take a little bit more time here. I know, producers, I see you. I see that clock.

I wanna say something. Maybe this shoe, maybe Nike knows something we don't. Don't you feel like Nike is like plugged into the government in a way where they know about the aliens and maybe they know what aliens feet look like? And so they designed this shoe for the alien feet. And they are just like galaxy brain worlds ahead of us. There's a galaxy brain happening here, all right.

It might be mine. Just saying, send us the shoes. Okay. Last one here. I mean, we've got Petty Nurkish versus LeBron Sopranos. So The Sun's Yusuf Nurkic trolled the warriors on Twitter after they lost to Sacramento. And we have that versus Pablo Torre finds out unearthing a Knicks recruitment video for LeBron from 2010. It also happens to be the last soprano scene ever.

I feel like, I mean, I feel like we kind of have to see that. Sorry, sorry, Nurk. We'll talk about you next week or something. Give me this video. Tell me, tell me what we got. Yeah, I'll take you down. Tony, I'm so glad we moved to New York. Life is so much better now.

Yeah. Life's good here, Carl. Even if we are in a witness protection program. Oh, my god. Now, we just got to find a place for your friend LeBron to live. What's he like? He's a modern guy.

But he respects tradition. This is. And you're something classy on the East Side. Was it big enough? It's going to be entertaining a lot of people. Where are they? It's very explaining. But he respects tradition. This is... Here's something classy on the East Side. Was it big enough? It's gonna be entertaining a lot of people. Where are they? This is like Hell's Kitchen?

Definitely Jersey. Still. You gotta find something magnificent. Something that's nothing in the world like it, one of a kind, like he is. Well, here's a place. It says it gets really loud. Oh, is she on Zillow? Oh, it's MSG. Oh, yeah.

Oh, come on. That's going to be perfect for me. They got two of the greatest actors. You like me to reintroduce myself. My name is Sully. To deliver this. No. City of Winners, it says after that.

Also, you can't use Jay-Z music when Jay-Z was one of the competing bidders on another team. Come on. By the way, Charlotte, I watched the episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, because I had to watch this video. Yeah. When I tell you that this was the least offensive part,

that there was a part that was way more offensive, would you like to know what the way more offensive part was, Charlotte? Yes, I would. Yes. So Jim Dolan, a billionaire guy that mixes around a lot of entertainment circles through his owning of a bunch of venues and also his musical exploits JD and the straight shot. So he reached out, of course, to all of his famous Hollywood

entertainment friends. Oh, you saw James Gandolfini and Edie Falco who play Carmela Antonio Soprano, obviously. He reached out to Chris Rock, New York City native, a big Nick fan. And he also reached out to his good friend, Harvey Weinstein. Now I know what you're thinking. Wait, I mean, that sounds like, you mean like the guy, not saying that, yes, that Harvey Weinstein. Yeah. And that is all the time that we have for oddball check out Paul Torrey finds out keep checking us out We love you. Thank you. Have a wonderful day

The day in love with our show with Stu gots is sponsored by better help. It's time for a self check-in How's your social battery right now? Is it drained or bursting with energy? The Day in the Leopard Tar Show with Stu Gotz is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's time for a self check in. How's your social battery right now? Is it drained or bursting with energy? Similar to how a battery stores energy before eventually running out, individuals with a social battery may feel a need to recharge or withdraw from social situations after a certain amount of time. It can be easy to ignore our social battery and spread ourselves thin, especially with

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Again, started on the breakfast lawn. Oh man, I've been singing the song to myself all morning while I'm... Breakfast flan, da-da-da-da-da Stugats! Have you never heard the breakfast flan song? No, hit me with it. Okay, I wish I had some breakfast flan, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da Breakfast flan, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da Where can I find a breakfast like that? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh duh estimates so obviously the most I think direct one is your estimation that more than half the league for these testers were in the program but then of course

Al Harrington is saying probably around 70% of the NBA when he played Kenyon Martin was saying he Kenny Martin played from 2015 overlapping with you in large part you sound yeah 85% of the NBA I'm just saying only half the league was caught that's not saying like you know a lot of people got out, cause I got, you gotta think, I got caught two times and I played for 15 years. You know what I mean? So there was a lot of times I wasn't getting caught. Right.

And so the question I have, which is based off of just that degree, that degree of pervasiveness in the league, when you think about why they were doing it, what's your theory? I don't know why that, I can never speak to why they were doing it. I can only speak to why I was doing it. And it was something that it would just

became a part of me and to this day. And I feel like in life, whether you're a big time athlete or CEO or just a housewife that takes care of kids all day, like everyone has a vice, whether it be a glass of wine, whether it be harder alcohol, whether it be harder drugs,

whatever it may be. And I kind of just felt like cannabis is not really that bad. And now that there's medical research backing it backing it up, you know, it was just kind of my call of my vice. And that's why I did it again, it was as an athlete, I wasn't someone who popped pills a bunch. While pills are I can only I've talked to football guys or pills are like in big jars of,

it's almost like little candy for them. But as for athletes, there was- Oh, it's a problem. For basketball, it was, we can get our hands on anything we want. I mean, I even got shot with Toradol to play. Which is again, a football style remedy. Yeah, so it's just like, it was always that,

or cut that in half and smoke weed with it. So the idea of pain management. I wonder if people appreciate how much of a constant state of pain some players are in. Because football is like, well that's football. But the NBA you're saying that... Hardwood. I mean, banging, falling on the ground, ankles, fingers. I mean, obviously football is contact every single, but you know, and then it's played on grass and it's a very physical sport.

Hockey, very physical. But basketball is that hardwood and we're on the ground a lot and people don't realize how hard like the ground is undefeated. You know what I mean? So it's just wear and tear. It's a long season, 82 games. So, you know, I was lucky to not really have any significant injuries, but it's just the wear and tear of just basketball alone is a lot on your body. Right. And so coming into this, I was like, okay, if we're talking about 85% of the NBA potentially, 85% of the highest level basketball league that's ever existed, enjoying cannabis, I want to get to the question of how many of those guys or at the very least How realistic it is that some people were taking? Whatever form of marijuana that they were in order to actually play better In order to be better at the game that they would be otherwise. I

wouldn't say that Cannabis directly makes you better from an enhancement standpoint of an HGH or a steroid or something like that. I would say it enhances your play because you get a great night's sleep. It helps with inflammation. I smoked before I played,

so I'm watching game film on Cove and I'm high. So I'm tuned into his moves. I know his rhythm. I know when he takes two dribbles right, he's gonna stop and shot fake and get me up in the air. He's gonna work So I'm locked in your stone watching Kobe Bryant the task out whoever was Carmelo Anthony LeBron James I want to rant that was my job

I had to guard the best players in the world every night the best guy on every team I had to guard every night This is why you're the perfect person to talk about With this stuff because your job was not merely to like get onto the floor and passively be a normal person while stoned. It was to stop the greatest scores in the history of the league. But there are lots of people out there who are listening to this conversation. They're like, when I smoke weed, I need to sit in a couch and not move. And you're doing potentially the most opposite version of that, of that entire spectrum of

possibilities. I'm trying to stop Kobe Bryant from scoring 40. You're trying to stay awake watching the rest of Oppenheimer. Right, right, right. It worked for me. It worked for me, you know what I mean? But there's times, a time where I would be getting,

I'm not gonna lie again, it did a lot of things for me. Mentally focused, sleep, anti-inflammatory, but there was time Pablo, it did a lot of things for me. Mentally focused, sleep, you know, anti-inflammatory, but there was time Pablo after just a crazy day of games, stress or family or issues or I'm in TMZ and on Sports Center and I'm fighting with my former teammate and I'm getting a divorce in front of the world, but I still gotta play. Like sometimes I-

You're getting name checked by Kanye, Matt Barnes. Man, right. I'm about to drive 90, 90 miles like Matt Barnes. Just to whip a **** ass. So I mean sometimes I do just sit back on the couch, man, and just smoking and get high and just kind of just allow things to... As your God given right as a human being. Absolutely.

God is good. But the question of the science of this, right? Of like, what does, what does marijuana help an athlete do potentially? So I've been reading into the science on this when you've talked to a couple of scientists. My name is Angela Bryan, and I'm a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder.

And their argument is, one of them is, this is not a performance enhancing drug. And what professor Bryan did in retrospect made a lot of sense. She set up this experiment to test the effect of cannabis on athletes by asking a runner to run the same route twice. Once under the influence of cannabis and another time sober. Under the influence of cannabis people they went pretty pretty significantly slower in the cannabis run. The data we have collected suggest that, you know, the organizations that ban cannabis on the basis of it being a performance enhancing drug are flat out wrong. But what you're saying is that you found benefits personally when it came to how you proceeded on the court.

And so one of the things that I'm curious about is when it came to playing in the game, specifically, how do you think it made you better? And I just think it was focus. It helped me with my focus. But I'll even take it back. Say we're in LA tonight. I'm playing for Golden State. We're in LA tonight. We play Kobe and the Lakers. And then we have a back to back on a TNT game, which means everything is a little bit later. And we got to fly to San Antonio right after this game to play Tim Duncan. So we're getting to San Antonio, TNT games, going to go an hour longer.

Everyone's got to do media after. It's going to take an hour and a half, two hours to get on the plane and actually in the air to San Antonio. We're not getting to San Antonio until anywhere between two and four a.m. So some people, it's hard to get off a plane, wake up, get on the bus and get to your room and go right back to sleep.

What are you going to do? Are you going to drink? Are you going to take a sleeping pill that's going to have you groggy now for eight to 10 hours? You know, it might mess up your pregame nap or me, I'm gonna go ahead and smoke me one to the face and make sure I go to sleep, you know, within the first 30 minutes, 40 minutes while I'm there and get a great sleep and get ready to guard Manu or Tony or whoever else I had to, you know, guard that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was just glad that it finally has reached a point where there's medical research backing this up and now, you know, most of major sports, if I'm not mistaken, test for once or don't test at all for it. Yeah, no, I mean, this is where we are living in the future, the future being the present tense now. So, like, for instance, I just want to contrast this, right? So Al Harrington once said that he would never get high before playing like Kevin Durant. But Al was my dog, so Al didn't even start smoking until like late. I wasn't really smoking during the days like where we were, and that's the only reason I'm talking sh**,

that's our guy. Yeah, yeah, of course. But it was, some guys didn't, like Steven Jackson, someone I can say that, you know, he was smoking while he was playing, he didn't smoke before games either. After games, he would blow down with you, but before games, he wouldn't.

So this club that you were, of course, a charter member of, like I'm smoking before a game. Explain, I guess, explain what that ritual was. So it would be, first of all explain the post-game ritual is normally everybody. Or whoever's a smoker on the team, after the game we're burning it down. Sometimes watching game film, sometimes you know order some food to the house, kick it, you're ready to go out, or whatever the situation might be. Day of is depends.

If you're on the road and there's a couple guys that smoke, I've had guys come to my room and after shoot around, we'll go to shoot around. Shoot around's 11 or 12 o'clock for an hour. We come home, I'll come home, and one of the teammates will come over to my room and we'll smoke one and then I'll take a nap. I'll wake up, take a shower, eat, and go to the game.

So within probably a, if I'm smoking about one or two in the game to seven. Yeah. Within a five hour window. So it's not like I'm smoking on the way to the game, but it was something that I would smoke and it helps me take my, because I like to take like two hour pregame naps, two, sometimes three hour pregame naps, help me take that nap, wake up, feel refreshed, get in the shower, eat, and it's time to go. Right.

And how set was that process? There was 95% of the time. Wow, wow. And so the question of focus, I wanna get to that because it's interesting, right? So as much as science is saying, you're not gonna get the benefits from weed as you would, anabolic steroids obviously,

it's interesting that like a sport like archery, and this is where you gotta go a little bit off the board to see the parallels, in Olympic archery, alcohol is a banned substance. Because the theory is that alcohol for some people calms their nerves. If you've ever played darts, if you've ever played beer pong, all of us have been, all of us have felt like Kobe. Oh, I wouldn't tell you, I'm nice at beer pong, by the way. I have no doubt about that.

Even if I have to keep my elbow behind the line. I was gonna say, the elbow rule is a big, I would be enforcing the shit out of that. Yeah, I'm getting it. I'm ready for it. Next time we hang together, we're playing beer pong. Who else was on your sort of approach? Who else is like, how many other guys were like that?

There was a lot, to be honest with you. You mean there was a lot I mean again close to I would only speak on people were close, you know that the Steven Jacksons What's can I speak of? Yeah, who's okay with this now? Yeah, it just depends because people are at different places in their life like some of my like some of my oh geez like someone who kind of raised me was my big brother was instrumental in and kind of raised me, who was my big brother, was instrumental in making it like this is a responsibility. You still have to do this and this and this. And he was someone who was kind of, again, big brother in me when I first came to the league

and I was bouncing around and not really set on any team, but still doing it because I knew it was something I was with. So I'll leave it at the names of Stephen Jackson but I played with some of the the greatest players ever to play this game have you know been involved with this plan and winning championships. Was there a sense as to like when you were in the league were guys smoking were they eating edibles were edibles really a thing at that point? Edibles were just coming along you have to think my last year was seven sixteen seventeen so edibles had had had touchdown but I felt like you had to be really well versed in that space and coming along, I think my last year was 16, 17. So edibles had had had touched down. But I felt like you had to be really well versed in that space and I wasn't. I had a couple

homeboys that were, they had the edibles down to microdosing before they was, because it just first came to edibles and they're what microdosing came later. Yeah. But at homeboys there were test dummies that would crash and yeah, and figure out what's right. And then, you know, and these are other athletes. These are other teammates You know to me one particular teammate was a test dummy was my dog one of my own How does one end up the test dummy on an NBA team? Just he's the one that wants to jump in there You know, I said edibles were new like we all kind of knew our we all had our older stories of how we found out How you know the actual joint or blunt were for us?

Edibles are different. There's only one way to find out what this specific edible contains. You got to jump in there, butt naked and see what happens. Don Lebatard. Go pee pee. Stugats. Go pee pee. This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats! Here you go, here you go. Give you a wait to see and it's gonna be official the Arizona Coyotes are relocating you heard it here they will leave Arizona there's no Saviors Arizona can focus on the D backs in their new ballpark that they need they can focus on Madish bea and how great he is at hugging Nikola or they

can focus on Kyla Murray getting better fine, but they are no longer going to be a four-sport city Book it coca wait to seize when we tell you something's gonna happen if it does great if it doesn't fine We'll revisit it because we're not like the other gas bags on the other networks We will revisit the Phoenix coyotes the Arizona coyotes are going to relocate The Arizona Coyotes are going to relocate. Relocated. That's the nothing personal word of the day. It is Friday, April 19, 2024. And you just heard a wait to see cash in.

From almost a year ago, the saga of the Arizona Coyotes is over. That's not exactly right. Arizona Coyotes is over. That's not exactly right. The saga of the Arizona Coyotes has taken another step. The Coyotes were sold yesterday officially to the National Hockey League for $1 billion. Alex Morello managed to turn a franchise, a franchise that couldn't get revenue. They were playing in mullet arena

in front of a couple thousand people. No prospects for a new arena, no prospects for any sort of resolution of any kind. Gary Betman is doing a Snoopy dance because he was able to get a billion point two for a relocated team. So let me explain. The NHL gave Alex Morello one point zero billion dollars.

They then owned the Coyotes. Unlike baseball, which bought the Expos from us back in 2002 and held them for a couple years, Betman held them for a couple seconds. He then turned around and sold the Arizona Coyotes to Ryan Smith with the agreement that they will be relocated to Utah, named the Utah blanks for $1.2 billion. That means that Gary Betman got a valuation above the Ottawa senators. The owners got to split a $200 million, quote unquote,

relocation fee. And Alex, the erstwhile owner, got something fascinating. The name, the Arizona Coyotes. How would that work for a deal? Do you think they, it's like when we wanted the bus during the Marlins transaction, hey, we're not going to do it without the bus. You think Alex was saying, hey, billion dollars, but I need the IP because I want an expansion team.

It's sort of like Oakland saying if we lose the A's, we want an expansion team. And Major League Baseball saying, well, that's all fine and dandy, but where's the ballpark, Claire? But it seems as though that Morello is under the impression that he's going to get an expansion team in the next five years. Because the NHL agreed in this historic transaction to give him a five-year window to get an arena built and get an expansion team. That's interesting to me. And when being done with the Coyotes,

Alex actually gave a statement, giving hope to the people of Phoenix, none of whom are despondent that Coyotes left because there was no political, there was no political, come on, Coca, what's the thing, wait, momentum. I'm tired this morning. We did a live show, I'm in Pittsburgh,

did a live show last night, it was fantastic. And then of course, we're up all night because Taylor Swift dropped 31 songs. Who could sleep when you've got 31 brand new I Love Travis songs from Taylor? I don't think it's very nice of her to drop songs in the middle of the night like that. It causes people like Sarah to stay up all night long,

Lionel, waiting for the songs. But that's why maybe the brain's a little behind it and I couldn't think of the word momentum. Now I don't even know why I was saying momentum. Oh, Gary Bettman, can we talk about, oh no, let's get to Alex's statement first. Do you mind, Goka? I'm sorry, I just wanna do that.

This is not the end for NHL hockey in Arizona. So for all of you people in Arizona who were nervous and upset, don't worry, it's not the end. It may be the end of the middle or the beginning of the end, but we're not at the end of the end. I have negotiated the right to reactivate the team within the next five years and have retained ownership of the beloved Coyotes named Brandon Logo. I don't mean to yuck on anyone's yum, but if it had been so beloved, I'm not sure the coyotes would

be in the position they're in right now. But let's just assume they're beloved. Then Alex said, I remain committed to this community and to building a first class sports arena and entertainment district. Wait for it. Can we have some music? What's the music that you'd play before this next phrase, Coca? Some sort of dun dun dun. Can you hit something on the soundboard? No? Please? Okay. Without seeking financial support from the public. That was your moment, Coca. You had another chance to do it again. Just to be clear, what's now been promised is that there's going to be a new arena, a big entertainment district with no

public money. Yes. God, I love MetalArk. Look at the resources we get. What he's referring to is that he's taking part, participating in a privately held land auction. If he wins this auction, which is what Gary Bepman had been saying we're all waiting for, but then apparently,

Gary Bepman couldn't wait another couple of weeks because he had to get the team moved to Utah immediately. But this land auction, if Alex prevails and wins the land, which is uncertain, but if he has the highest bid, he'll get it, he then plans to build an arena and an entertainment district. Does that sound familiar?

That is what owners are doing now in order to justify putting any money into an arena when it's really not a great investment, which is why you seek public money. But when you have what Atlanta has, when you have what Jerry Reinsdorf is trying to get, when you have what all these teams, St. Louis has it, all these teams are trying to get these entertainment districts, the Mets are trying to do it. He's saying that he's going to get that done and built with no public assistance. Let me tell you the number of cities that have had an owner build an entertainment district without any public assistance.

I'll wait. give me your guess. Zero. The last owner to say that he would build something without public assistance, which was John Henry in Florida to build a new ballpark, and he was run out of town because it turns out you can't do it without public assistance. Public assistance includes infrastructure.

It includes running utility pipes and wires. It includes ingress, egress, anything that's done to support the district, to support this privately owned and privately profitable district. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. I dig it. I like it.

But why in the world would he say without seeking financial support from the public? It's idiocy Which I guess is on brand and tracks So the coyotes are not relocated so we should do a different word of the day. Here we go four six nine Utah blanks. That's the nothing personal word of the day for Friday, April 19th, because that's a brand new hockey team. Well, wait a minute, not true, because it's going to be the Arizona players who knew nothing about this until there was a meeting just a couple days ago, where the GM sat

down with them and said, listen, gentlemen, I hope that you only rented in Arizona because we're going to take you all to Utah and let's start looking for housing. Don't look for alcohol. Don't look for trying to go to a bar without ordering food. But that said, you can look for multiple people in your family if you want. I'm just, I love Utah. Maybe you'll see Dwyane Wade. I actually do love Utah. I love skiing there, I love going there. But when players are relocated, it's a thing.

You have to involve them because think about it, their entire family is moving. You may or may not bring anyone in the front office, but you clearly are bringing everyone in the traveling party is what it's called. So the players, the trainers, the therapists, the GMs, all of the hockey people are gonna move and they've got to find places to live.

And it's not like they've got a multi-year runway. I am told, I have an inside source, her name is Sarah, and I was told that the hockey season starts in only six months. That's it. We're now in April. We haven't even started the playoffs yet. And the new season, as you know, starts in October. So there is a huge amount of work to be done prior to the season starting, not the least of which is finding a name, finding a uniform design, which normally takes years, not months.

They've got to get all the apparel sent to all of the licensed retailers. They've got to start selling it. And then they've got to figure out their revenue. So we had an amazing tweet. We've got Steve Cohn part two here, by the way, Coca. Ryan Smith, he likes to tweet. And you know when owners tweet, good things happen.

He tweeted out yesterday that they have 6,000 deposits for season tickets in the first two hours. And it's now up to 11,000. So I want to explain what a season ticket deposit is. You go online, you fill out your name and information, you pay a hundo, and then you have become a season ticket deposit holder, which means that you have reserved the right

to buy season tickets for an unknown price. Coke and I were gonna go online and we were gonna buy season tickets in Utah and we were gonna see where the seats are, we were gonna see how to do it, but we decided instead, we didn't want to, again, that's two yucks and two yums here this morning on a random Friday.

I'm not saying that 11,000 is a bad number. That's an exciting number. But I am saying the conversion rate from deposits to actual full season equivalence is what they're called. You may know by the name of a season ticket holder, but inside a league team, we don't call it that. It's called an FSE. What we publicly talk about are season ticket holders.

What we care about are FSEs. So here's the difference. If you have 41 home games and you have one seat that is sold to four people, 10 games each, those are partial full season ticket holders because they bought 25% of a season. We get to tell you we have four season ticket holders, but it's really only one full season equivalent. And when you're doing your projections, when you're doing your financial statements, you don't care about season ticket holders, you care about full season equivalents.

So, it is way better PR to announce ticket holders because you could have four, you could have five, you could have six people per seat. So 11,000 season ticket deposits does not mean they made a deposit to buy a 41 game package, which in hockey would be a full FSC. It could be a five game package. When we were building Marlins Park and we went out to get season ticket holders, we were selling all sorts of different packages

so we could say, hey, look, we have 13,000. It's still not a terrible number, but it certainly to me does not indicate that all is going to be perfect in Utah. There is no guarantee. The other business part of this transaction that was interesting is that the story they're sticking to, both Betman and Ryan Smith,

is that all of this came together in seconds. Ryan Smith did an entire statement where he talked about how we pivoted, we were looking at expansion, but then we got a call from hockey and Gary Bettman said, hey, can you guys pull this off? The coyote situation is going to be a little longer than we thought. I'm not sure what Gary meant by that. It's already been a half a decade longer than it needed to be. So no matter what, it's been longer than they thought. But he said, Gary said, it's been longer than we thought. The NHL has a problem, and we said, we're ready.

Do you know how hard it is to start a team in a city? And I'm not saying they won't be ready in time, but a expansion franchise, it takes years to get going. But this is a relocated franchise. So in theory, you can do it a whole lot faster. But even when teams relocate, they prepare for years. And the Delta Center is not ready for hockey. It's got to be fitted for hockey. There have to be upgrades made. And they are on the clock. It's gonna be quite fascinating to see what goes down.

But from hockey standpoint, they don't have to worry about the Arizona Coyotes anymore. Now they can just start if they want, worrying about the Utah Blanks. Anyone have any suggestions? Anyone? To make your suggestions to Ryan, you may name the team. Nah, I don't think so.

What else interested me about that? The Diamondbacks response, what happens when a team leaves? I've already told you my dirty little secret that I rooted against the Dolphins, I rooted against dirty little secret that I rooted against the Dolphins. I rooted against the Heat and I rooted against the Panthers. I admit it when I was president of the team I had to say the rising the all ships rise with the tide. We sent out tweets and I would call all people from other teams when they were in the playoffs, hey good luck I'm thinking about you go get them win

the title, let's do it for Miami, let's be a championship city. It was total horse hockey. Not that I didn't like Eric or Pat, with the heat, of course I do, or Vinny and Matt with the Panthers, or nobody with the Dolphins.

I'm just saying that I want those teams to be eliminated quickly so the focus can be on the Marlins, or I don't want the frame of reference to be how good the other teams are and how bad our team is, because then we're looking worse by comparison. The Diamondbacks, in what I view

as an unprecedented reaction to the Arizona Coyotes relocating to Utah, is it the Phoenix Coyotes or the Arizona coyotes relocating to Utah. Is it the Phoenix coyotes or the Arizona coyotes? I'm completely blanking right now. Again, I keep getting it wrong. It's the Arizona coyotes. Thank you, Koka. The Diamondbacks released a statement about the relocation. The entire Diamondbacks organization is

disappointed in the now official news of our NHL team being relocated out of state. We firmly believe that we deserve and can support teams from each of the major sports and are troubled that a solution could not be found for all parties involved. We are sad for all sports fans and all who care so deeply about our community. Let me break that down for if you don't mind because people have sent me this and have given me their view, which is the Diamondbacks must be happy that the team left. They're not sad. It's more sponsorship revenue. It's more people not spending money on hockey will

spend money on baseball. No, that's not what this statement is about. This statement is about getting public money. That's all it is. Ignore the beginning part of the statement. First of all, the entire Diamondbacks organization, people in corporate sales, not disappointed. But just ignore that part. Go right down to the bottom. We are troubled that a solution could not be found for all parties involved.

What that means is that the Diamondbacks who are currently trying to figure out including the fact that they threatened relocation and then Ken Kendrick, the owner of the Diamondbacks walked it back saying, no, no, we're not leaving Arizona. Don't worry. We're not leaving Phoenix. But their ballpark, which was beautiful and is now on the old side, it needs renovating or more likely they need a new ballpark. And to do it they need to find a public-private partnership and they have not been able to do it yet. What they are saying here, if you read between the lines, is you better come to us with a deal that we like and that you can swallow or else forget being a four-sport

city realistically you're going to be a two-sport city and this deal with the Diamondbacks has been going on for over a year. I told you back in April of 2023, we have an open way to see that the Diamondbacks will get a new stadium deal done. And I still believe that's just over a year ago. I still believe that is going to be the case. And it is not however, made more likely by the Coyotes leaving. It is not made less likely by the Coyotes leaving.

And keep in mind, the Coyotes may not have left. There's no mention in the Diamondback statement at all about the fact that Morello kept the rights to the Coyotes, that he has the ability to bring a team back in the next five years if he gets an arena built. Knowing the ridiculousness of the no public support, he he gets an arena built, knowing the ridiculousness of the no public support, he's going to be going after public money. So there's multiple teams going after public money.

So the Diamondback statement is just disingenuous. And I love you, Derek, one of the best team presidents around. But you know that your statement could have been this. That would have been a better statement. The Day in the Laboratory Show with Stu Gotz is sponsored by BetterHelp. It's time for a self-check-in. How's your social battery right now? Is it drained or bursting with energy?

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