The Kevin Sheehan Show - Countdown To Skins Splash

Episode Date: March 6, 2019

Kevin opens the show feeling sorry for Coach K's current dilemma of having a mere 3 NBA first round picks instead of 4. Then it's on to the latest on Antonio Brown and Adam Schefter's report that Brown would be traded by the end of the week. Former Redskins' salary cap expert and NFL agent J.I. Halsell joined the show to share his thoughts on the Skins' expected moves leading up to and during free agency. Kevin talked some college hoops and then welcomed in Kevin Durant's former trainer and world-renowned performance coach/speaker, Alan Stein Jr. <p> </p><p>Learn more about your ad choices. Visit <a href="https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices">podcastchoices.com/adchoices</a></p> Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You want it. You need it. It's what everyone's talking about. The Kevin Sheehan Show. Now here's Kevin. All right, I'm here. Aaron's here. This show's presented by Window Nation. If you're in the market for Windows, call 86690 Nation or go to Window Nation. And tell them that we told you to call. Mike Shishowski said last night after Duke barely beat Wake Forest, 71 to 70, as a 25 and a half point favorite last night playing once again, without Zion Williamson, Shoshchevsky said, quote, playing with not a full deck has been very difficult. Closed quote. God, I missed being in the same league as Coach K. I mean, three first-round draft picks, Aaron, on the floor last night.

Two top five picks, and it's difficult playing without Zion. He also said last night that he expects Zion to be ready for the ACC tournament. So it sounds like he is going to come back and play. So thank God for that, because they would be in deep trouble with only three first round picks instead of four. I don't understand how any team could ever survive under those circumstances. I watch Duke like you do, like a lot of you out there do. Look, Kay is a really good coach.

He's a really good coach. He's great with his players, always has been. He's not an X's and O's genius, just so you know. He's not. There are many better X's and O's coaches. coaches in college basketball than Coach K. All right, Bob McKillop at Davidson, Tom Izzo, John Beeline, Matt Painter, Lon Kruger, to name a few.

Tony Bennett, definitely. You know, Kay rolls the balls out for the most part. I mean, that's an exaggeration. He doesn't just roll him out. He can coach. Of course he can coach. All right. So for all of you that are big Shoshesvsky fans, you're rolling your eyes right now

thinking that this is a Maryland rant, it's not. I'm just telling you that there are a dozen guys minimum, maybe two dozen, that if given equal talent, and really, if they were given, if you had K with lesser talent against a coach with equal lesser talent, if that makes sense, so no five stars, just a team, no NBA kids, a group of hardworking, smart, three, and maybe a couple of four-star players, you give K that, There are a dozen or two dozen coaches that would whoop his ass. Whop his ass. Ed Cooley at Providence.

Greg Marshall. Chris Mack. The other guys I mentioned. Macillop, Izzo, B-line, Painter, Kruger, Bennett. I could go on. I'm just off the top of my head. Guys that I know can flat out coach them up. X's and O's.

Out-stratage. With lesser talent. K's a great. coach. I'm not saying he's not a great coach. I'm just saying he also has great talent and always has had great talent. And this team better get to the final four with or without Zion Williamson. They have three NBA first round picks. So if he doesn't have a fourth, please, he still has more talent than anybody in the country. He's a good coach. I don't want to come off as I think he just literally just rolls the balls out.

That was an exaggeration. He can coach. I'm just saying, and you can ask coaches that you know. If you know coaches who really know other coaches, they'll tell you there are two dozen guys out there that are better X's and O's coaches than K. All right, let me move on. Antonio Brown.

There's news on Antonio Brown this morning. Adam Schaefter tweeted out, teams that have spoken to the Steelers about a potential Antonio Brown trade have been told that a deal is expected to be in place by Friday. That's per league sources. The Redskins are interested. Schaefter mentioned that the other day, along with the Raiders and the Titans.

Ian Rappaport reported that the Jets and Cardinals were interested, but they're out. Other reports say there are more teams in this thing than previously thought. Antonio Brown, this is going to be done here, according to Schaefter, by 48 hours. from now by Friday, you know, before the league calendar starts. Now, would not become official until the league calendar begins on March 13th, but they'll still announce the trade. Just like, you know, all trades, you know, recently get announced even though they're not official. Like the Flacco trade

isn't official until the league calendar begins. The Alex Smith trade a year ago wasn't official until the league calendar began, which was in March. It's March 13th this year. I'll say what I've said before, which is I would not give up number 15 overall for Antonio Brown. If you told me I could get him for a second, I'm not thrilled about the possibility of Antonio Brown being on my roster, but I do know the benefit. I know what the upside is. The upside's very high, and the downside is very low. And one of the things you have to consider is that you're going to have to give him a contract extension. This is part of the problem in Pittsburgh. He thinks he's vastly underpaid. So if you want a happy Antonio Brown, you're probably going to have to tear up the remaining two years of

his deal and give him a new deal. The other thing, too, now, you know, the fact that this is heated up a little bit says to me that somebody's giving up a first. Oakland's going to give up a first. Maybe not number four overall. I'd be shocked if it was number four overall. No, maybe one of the lower ones they got in the-24 and 27. That's it, right? I believe so. Yeah, they're two in the 20s. Yeah. The 49ers apparently might be one of those teams. That makes sense to a certain degree. I think Denver would make sense. I think Flacco and Antonio Brown in Denver would make a lot of sense. It depends how they feel about Emmanuel Sanders. There's been talk recently that he is going to be coming back. He is going to be part of a team. So I don't know if there's room for Brown and Sanders on that team. Well, okay, that's fine. The other thing, too, is I don't see Denver giving up number 10 overall for Antonio Brown. So I guess the net takeaway from the news that things are moving along pretty quickly and that Pittsburgh expects this to be done.

Look, this could be posturing on Pittsburgh's part to make people really step to the plate in urgent fashion. But I bet that the Steelers get a first round pickback for Antonio Brown. And that means for the Redskins to get Antonio Brown, they'd have to give up number 15 overall. Now, if you got Antonio Brown and a third back or something like that, but my sense of it is Pittsburgh's going to get a first round pick. So for the Redskins to make the Steelers an offer that they take, now they are an NFC team which could benefit them more than the Raiders or the Titans, but I don't think the Steelers are really fearful of the Raiders quite yet.

And maybe not even the Titans, but I just think it's going to take 15 overall. So my sense of it is that, well, from my standpoint, I hope they don't do it. It doesn't mean that I think they won't do it. I think it's in play. I think, again, I've said this for the last two or three days. I think Dan Snyder has reached the point of desperation. I think he is ready to sell something, that he needs something to sell, and there's no chance in hell that an offseason of Terence Knighton,

Greg Toller, and Pernell McPhee are going to do it for him. Just not. He needs something this offseason. They realize the economic, the financial hit they have taken the last two years. He needs some action, and I think he's going to force Bruce to give it to him. So we'll see. I would say that they're in the hunt for Antonio Brown, but only if they're willing to give up number 15 overall. meantime NFL free agency starts a week from today officially although the so-called negotiation period you know or the open period i guess is the 11th so monday we'll start hearing about deals to get ready for next week teams are already beginning to make cuts to prep their rosters and salary caps so that they are more nimble for this time of year and yesterday there was a cut that

was really shocking to me. The Ravens released Eric Weddle. That was a big surprise to me. He's been one of my favorite players for years. He's been very good in Baltimore, or at least I thought he was. The Ravens defense has been as good as any other the last two seasons in particular, and he's been like a coach on the field. Every time you read about the Ravens defense, it's Weddle gets us in the right positions. He's so valuable, yada, yada, yada. They released him. The Ravens's said goodbye and took the salary cap benefit that they got from his release. There are a ton of safeties out there now in free agency. Who knows if any of them would be interested in coming here?

And who knows if the skins will be aggressive going after a list that includes now, Eric Weddle, Landon Collins, the Honey Badger, Terran Matthew, Earl Thomas, Lamarcus Joyner. And yes, ha-ha Clinton Dicks. you know, on Weddell, by the way, given the number of quality safeties that are out there, maybe the Ravens think that because of his age, he's not going to get a big deal and they'll be able to go back to him with something that makes sense for them.

I wouldn't rule Weddle back to the Ravens as being out. I think that that actually is still in. J.I. Hallsell is going to join us on the show. J.I. is an old friend, worked in the Redskins organization, was an agent, knows everything there is to know about free agency and the cap and contracts. He's going to join us. I'll ask him about whether or not he thinks Weddell could still end up back in Baltimore. With that said, a few of you actually reached out to me on Twitter yesterday to say that

Weddle wasn't, and you were Ravens fans, all right? You said that Weddle wasn't as good as most would think last year and that he wasn't worth the money this year. You know, I often feel this way about my own team that the information that comes from people like some of you out there and me, those of us that are watching every single play and following every single, you know, day-to-day drama that sometimes we know more than everybody else. And so that information from a few, I believe to be hardcore Ravens fans was interesting. You know, it's like Ha Ha, Clinton Dix to a certain degree. Remember this. On the day after the trade, I ask the question that I always ask when it comes to the Redskins in particular, what does the team that's trading the player know that the Redskins don't know?

You know, and if you recall, there were no tears shed by Packers fans when Clinton Dix got traded. I said it on that day. I questioned the trade. Others did too. Most thought it was a great trade. And I remember saying, you know, why would they, in the midst of they were still very much in a playoff hunt. If he's so good, why would they trade him for a fourth? As it turned out, at least through the half season he played here, he didn't set the world on fire here when he got here. At times he looked awful. So, you know, that trade does not

look very good right now. The Redskins have a big need at safety. They have major needs elsewhere, too, but safety without a doubt is one of those needs that I think we would all say, his Redskins fans, it's a major need. Don't be surprised if stubborn Bruce and his band of merry personnel men don't decide to resign Clinton Dix instead of going after somebody else because they may want to avoid the embarrassment of having to admit that they made a bad trade before the trade deadline. Dense and arrogant. I've talked about it many times over the last few years.

It's a bad combination and it leads to things. things like resigning, ha ha, to save face. Watch that one for the next few weeks. That would be interesting. If they resign Clinton Dix, instead of making a move on six to seven to maybe eight safeties in free agency that are clearly better, you'll know why, and I'll know why. It'll be a safe, a face saving exercise. The Landon Collins thing is interesting.

The Eric Weddle thing is interesting. interesting. I mean, why would both of those teams let would appear to be high-quality players and team leaders leave? In the case of Baltimore, they cut him, Landon Collins, they're letting Landon Collins hit free agency without franchising him. That's something you always have to wonder, especially with Collins. I mean, Weddle may be a positioning thing to bring them back, but a much younger player like Collins, who's played at a very high level, who's been durable, who's a reported team leader. Why? The franchise tag would have cost the Giants 11 plus million for Collins. It's a lot of money, but not for a

player like him, at least on the surface of what I think of him as a player. What don't we know that they know? You always have to ask that. The Landon Collins thing is surprising. The Eric Weddle thing is surprising, although I think you could do In your mind, you could say the Ravens intend on going back after him. They think they see a crowded safety market. They don't think at his age he'll get a big deal, and they can get him for a better number. One more thing.

The Redskins, before we get to J.I. Hullsell, who will bring in here in a moment, the Redskins do have a need at safety. But in my view, they've got a bigger need that would make the need they have at safety less important. The Redskins need a pass rusher. That's what they need. An edge pass rusher to go with what is already a solid interior D-line of pass rushers in Alan ionitis and pain.

The Redskins haven't had a dominant game-changing pass rush in years, if not decades. You put a legitimate, fear-inducing edge pass-rusher on the field to go with the strength of their team, which is their D-line. then the need for safety isn't necessarily as big as we think. It doesn't disappear, but if I've got a choice of Landon Collins or say Judavian Clowny, give me the pass rusher. They may not have a legit chance to get a pass rusher, and they may have to do it in the draft.

They may have a much better chance of getting a safety, because these free agents, they have to pick you as much as you pick them. But if you gave me the chance, I'll take pass rush over. coverage any day of the week. I mean, doesn't everybody know that? Doesn't everybody know that a great pass rush makes an average secondary really good and a bad pass rush makes a really good secondary average? That's like an old tried and true NFLism. I think it is. I'll take the pass rush. You give me a dominant pass rush and we'll figure out the secondary. I like Allen. I like pain. I like I like ionitis. I need pass rushers that are better than Ryan Kerrigan and Preston Smith. I need a guy

that the other defensive coordinators are up at night during the week trying to figure out how to block my edge pass rusher. Pass rush over coverage. I don't even think it's debatable. Anyway, a quick moment on Wind Donation. Harley and Aaron, they're good friends. They are two of the best entrepreneurs I have ever met. They built this company from scratch. It is the most successful window company in the country. Right now, I know you're wishing that this winter and the crazy cold weather will end at some point, and it will, but if you think you need new windows, now is the time to get those old and drafty windows replaced. Why in the dead of winter? Because it's when you get the best deal, the best pricing. When donations award-winning installation teams need work,

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Get two free windows for every two you buy. Buy four windows, get four free. There is no limit. Plus nothing down, no payments, no interest for a year. 86690 Nation or windownation.com and tell them that I sent you. you. All right, let's bring in J.I. Hallsell, who is an old friend, Jay I worked with the Redskins and their salary cap, you know, group with Eric Schaefer way back in the day. You know, J.I's been on, been on with us on radio many times over the years. He's a contract, you know,

cap expert. He works with agents in the NFL. You can follow him, by the way, on Twitter at Salary Cap 101. But I wanted to bring J.I. on today because today, really over the next few days, I'm expecting that the Redskins start to make moves to get, you know, more cap space, J.I. I mean, a lot of the names have been bandied about Stacey McGee, Vernon Davis, Zach Brown. But I wanted to start with just right now, what is the Redskins' overall cap situation? And then what do you anticipate them doing here over the next week before free agency starts? Yeah, well, according to overthecap.com, which is a great resource, run by a good buddy of mine, Jason Fitzgerald.

The Redskins currently have just under $17 million in CAP space. That puts them in the bottom tier of NFL teams in terms of CAP space. So to what you just said, as you head into Free Agency, you're going to want to start freeing up some more space so that you can be a player to feel some needs on your team. And I think we're all familiar with some of the names that have been kind of thrown out there as possible. Cap casualties, if you will.

so Zach Brown, Vernon Davis, Mason Foster, Stacey McGee, do you do a restructure with Jordan Reed or a pay cut with Jordan Reed? Do you restructure some of your core players like Ryan Kerrigan, Trent Williams, Josh Norman? And do you get an extension done with Brandon Cherf to lower his cap number and also lock him up for the next few years? So a lot of work for Eric Schaefer and those guys to get done between now and March 13. but to your point I suspect we'll see some of these moves coming down here the next week

I want to start with Brandon Sheriff actually off of that answer they they've already made public that they intend on extending him and getting a long-term deal done with him they have to do it now right because if you wait until you get into the season on this fifth year option and the season's not going well but he's playing well you know you risk him just saying to hell with it I'll wait and I'll, I want to get to free agency. So I'm assuming that the intent now is to try to get it done. They've said that. And I wanted to know if they didn't get it done, would that be an indication that

Brandon Sheriff at some point, you know, a year from now, wants to be a free agent? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, part of the lessons learned from the Kirk Cousin situation, right, is that you want to try to get ahead of this as much as possible. I think if you throw enough money at a player and if you say we're going to make to the highest paid guard in football, you know, there's a greater likelihood of getting a deal done. Conversely, though, from a player perspective, if you're not sure of the direction of the organization, then maybe you say, you know what, I'm hesitant to do a deal right now, going to play through my 50-year option, and then, you know, run the risk, though,

of the Redskins franchise tagging you. And so I think that all things considered, this is one that should get done, done in the near term so that we don't get to the situation where we're having to potentially tag him next year. But again, it's going to cost something upwards of making him the highest paid guard in football. So what is that? The Norwell deal was what, $67 million or whatever for five years?

Yeah, Norwell was about 13.3, but then Zach Martin is $14 million per year. So Zach Martin sets the market. So 70 over $5. is a minimum. Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, it's going to be lucrative, but again, you want to get ahead of it. Caps going up.

He's a core member of your team and someone you want to build around as you move it to the future. That's the cost often to buy out their free agency. All right. I think one of the interesting questions for them is Josh Norman. Now, I'm assuming you're following. following a little bit of what's going on with the organization, J.I. They think they're close. Close to what? Who knows?

But they think, you know, it was nothing but injuries that derailed what would have been, you know, a memorable season. I think a lot of us believe that they have a significant number of needs and are looking more like a double-digit loss team next year than a double-digit win team. So with that understood, my sense of it is, is that they're going to keep Josh Norman. But they could save a lot by releasing him. I think it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $8 to $9 million in cap space. What do you think they'll do? Well, they would save $8.5 million by releasing him. I think this is a make-a-break year for Josh Norman in Washington. I think that, you know, going back to your earlier point in terms of them being close, you know,

close to what being a playoff team, sure, if you don't have the quarterback injury, they were definitely on that trajectory of being a playoff team. I wouldn't say that they're close to being a Super Bowl contender, but he is a core member of your team. He is starting to get a little long in the tooth, and the question becomes, do you want to pay that high price point for Josh Norman as you move into the future, or do you want to find a younger, cheaper, you know, next Josh Norman via the draft?

So, you know, he's another guy that as you try to free up some cap space, as we had in the free agency, maybe you do something with his deal to free up some space. But I think this is a make-a-break year in 2019 for Josh Norman. He may or may not be here in 2020. All right. Given the names that we've talked about, you know, you call it $17 million right now in available cap space, you know, in the bottom third of the league. If they were to release, you know, Zach Brown and save $6 million,

Vernon Davis 5, Stacey McGee, you know, roughly two restructure sheriff to get a more attractive cap number, maybe, you know, two to three million less next year if it's structured right. Do you see them, you know, having the ability to get into that 35 to $40 million available cap space area, which would give them some reasonable dry powder to do something next week or not? Yeah, definitely. I think that just between Zach Brown, Vernon Davis,

and Stacey McGee, that gets you to just under $17 million in additional cap space. So now you compound that on top of what they've already got in 17 million caps days. That gets you to 34.

Right. Just by doing those four players right there. Brown, Davis, Foster, who I don't think you mentioned. No, I didn't mention Foster. And Stacey McGee. What's the, What's the Foster cap savings?

$4 million. Oh, it is four? Okay, I didn't realize it was four. Then, you know, I think they like him, actually. And I think a lot of it's going to have to do with Ruben Foster, you know, and whether or not they think he's going to be available and when. Because without Foster, now all of a sudden you let, you know, Brown and Mason Foster go. You may not have an inside linebacker to start the season with.

Yeah. then are definitely rolling the dight on the availability of Ruben Foster. That's right. And then you're hoping that one of your young guys steps up to be, you know, the other inside backer, which I think... Sean Dean Hamilton, they like a lot. Exactly. And that's where I think if you pair him with a Ruben Foster and effectively swap out

Zach Brown and Mason Foster, then, again, you do those two guys. Brown Foster, Vernon Davis, and Facing McGee, and you get yourself to $17 million. And that doesn't even include any savings from doing an extension with Brandon Shurf. All right, big picture. You know this team, and we've talked about this team together over the years. And there was a big difference between the Vinny Dan era and the Dan Bruce era. They have been a much more cost-conscious, you know, fiscally responsible if you want to use that term organization than they were during the, you know, from 1999 through 2009.

It's just a different, you know, the reputation that the Redskins have among many people around the league is not really appropriate anymore, right? I mean, we know this is people who follow the team every day. You know, other than Josh Norman, who sort of became available at the 11th hour because they rescinded the franchise tag Carolina did. and Deshawn Jackson, who basically didn't sign for a massive deal here, and he wanted to play in the division and play the Eagles. You know, other than those two names, it's been a lot of Pernell McPhese and Orlando Scandrix over the years. You know, I've described Bruce J.I. as a guy who gets a great deal on an average player

better than anybody. You know, there haven't been any real good players, but there have been great deals. My sense of it is after what we've gone through here over last year and the year before, because there has been considerable erosion of the fan base. It's stunning what has happened that Dan wants back in. Dan wants to go back to the way it used to be, and he wants something he can sell and he can market. Do you have the same feeling from where you are?

And if so, if they created 35 to 40 million in cap space, who do you think they'd go after? Well, the big one out there that they've been linked to is not even a free agency. It's the Antonio Brown possibility, right, which from my perspective, I don't like it because you don't even know who's throwing him the ball. But to take on that contract and potentially provide Antonio Brown a new contract, that would seem to align to what you just said in, Dan wanting to kind of get back in to make a big splash, whether it's...

to the benefit or detriment to the club in the long run. In terms of free agency, my sense is that, you know, even if you do create cap space that get you to $34 million, that they're not going to be, you know, big players in pursuing some of these guys. Like, I don't foresee them pursuing, say, a Earl Thomas. Landon Collins, you know, depending upon what the price point is. could get expensive as well. I think along the lines of what you just said,

I mean, if we're looking at, say, the safety position as an example, you know, a Tyrant Matthew and his versatility might come in at a value price point relative to the other kind of high-end safeties out there or a guy like a Lamarcus joiner. Not a very splashy signing, but functionally a pretty good player.

What do you think Landing Collins is going to get? I don't know that Earl Thomas or Landing Collins gets to Eric Barry's $13 million per year, but I think both players end up in excess of $10 million per year, whereas I think a player like a Tyrant Matthew ends up just shy of $10 million, so maybe in the neighborhood of $9 million per year. It's just there's so many safeties out there now, inclusive of Eric Weddle, you know, yesterday,

that teams are going to say, you know what, In lieu of paying Earl Thomas, 12 million per year, Landon Collins, 11 million per year. We can go with an Eric Weddell, we can go with a Tyrant Matthew, and go with a Lamarckis Joyner. And so you can find value there. What's also interesting about Landon Collins and Earl Thomas is that they share an agent.

And so that agent, David Mulligata, has a really good pulse on what the safety market is, and I'm sure he's going to try to play them off of each other to some degree. I think that there's a chance that the Ravens released Weddle because of the crowded safety market, his age, and the possibility that they'll be able to resign him for something less. Do you agree that that's a possibility or not? I agree. I mean, in some way, it's similar to the approach you're taking with CJ Mosley, which is completely surprising to me because he's an all-pro player. He's a core guy that you drafted. has developed into, again, an all pro. At a minimum, if you want to let the market kind of set his value, at least transition tag him so that then, you know,

he could undoubtedly he'd get an offer sheet and then you have at least the right to match it. And if you choose to move on, then you move on. The approach that they've gone right now with CJ Mosley is that, you know, we want to let the market set his value and then maybe we'll have the opportunity to resign. That's a significant risk and roll of the dice. Why do you think the Giants chose not to franchise Landing Collins?

That's another head scratcher. I think, and I've heard this for the past couple of years, is that the franchise tag and the franchise tag amount, which under the current CBA are now tied to the increase in salary caps, are almost becoming cost prohibitive to teams. And so you'll see less teams use the tag, which from a player perspective, you know, that's what they would actually prefer.

But again, in a case of C.J. Mosley, in the case of Landon Collins, these are guys that you drafted, these are guys that you've homegrown, these are guys who've developed into all pro-caliber players. Why not tag them, whether it's the transition tag or the franchise tag, if anything, to buy yourself more time to negotiate a long-term deal? I don't know the answer to this. Maybe you do. Did the Giants attempt to get a long-term deal done with Landon Collins or not? My understanding is that they did not.

Well, then that, doesn't that sort of tell you more than anything that, for whatever reason, they don't see the, you know, landing Collins being worth, let's just call it somewhere in the neighborhood of the Eric Barry contract? Yeah, I would agree, but I'm not sure why they use him that way. And obviously, they know the guy, he's in their building. As an outsider looking in, he would appear to be a locker room leader. I do know some people who know him, you know, personally, and say that, you know, he's a good person, he's a good teammate, he's everything you want, and on the field, you know, he's been productive.

I know he's got the shoulder injury currently, but all things consider he's been fairly durable and wanting to go out there in spite of injury. So, again, Landon Collins and C.J. Mosley, not getting tagged in any form is a little bit surprising. What do you think Preston Smith will get on the open market? Yeah, I feel like his situation really is not too different than when Brian O'Rackpo left Washington in that. Solid player, you know, good player, not elite, versatility both from a pass rush and run defense standpoint.

Does he get in excess of $10 million? I think that's kind of his ballpark. you know, we'll see. Like all of these things, you just never know. It's purely dependent upon the number of suitors he has in the market. Give me a pass rusher that the Redskins could sign in free agency to not just replace Preston Smith, but hopefully to be a significant upgrade over Preston Smith. And even Ryan Kerrigan.

You know, I think Kerrigan has been a good player over the years, Jay. I don't think he's the fear-inducing, you know, edge pass-rusher that keeps defensive coordinators up at night either. I mean, I don't think he's been that player. Is anybody like that available? And I'm going to mention a player to you here in a moment that I think would be at the bottom of the free agency list in that particular position. But give me some pass rushers that you think are available and that the Redskins could pursue if they were interested. I think the first one that comes to mine is off the top of my head. he got a little bit of baggage, but is Dante Fowler.

You know, the former high pick, and when he got traded to the Rams last season, he did make an impact as a rusher. Again, he does have some baggage. You know, he has some character concerns, but he is good at rushing the passer and would provide you kind of a younger player to play opposite of Kerrigan. So just off the top of my head, he's a guy who comes in mind. there's a guy that I loved coming out of the draft, and he's been hurt a lot in recent years, but he's got incredible speed I think would fit in as an outside three, four linebacker,

and he's a free agent, and he's not going to require, I don't think, a lot of money, because of, you know, perhaps the injuries, and, you know, I read the other day he spent $10,000 on a tattoo, but that is Shane Ray. Shane Ray's got that explosive edge speed, you know, and he was playing out, you know, obviously opposite Von Miller when he was in there, but the market for him isn't significant, right? I would think not. You know, to what your point, he, or to your point, he has had the injury bug throughout his entire career. Coming out of Mizzou, you know, he was super productive there.

Obviously, went in the first round. He just hasn't been able to stay healthy, but as a result, you may be able to get a bargeant. right like you roll the dice on his upside that he can um kind of be healthy for you he's 20 he's only 26 years old you mean he's a very similar case to dante fowler except you know dante fowler's issues have been more character Shane ray's issues have been more injury both guys are 25 26 years old um so shame right theoretically could be a guy who maybe you get on a one or two year deal at a bargain I think Zadarius Smith is better than Preston Smith. I don't know if the market's going to be, you know, in that area,

but I think he's a better pass rusher than Preston Smith. It's funny that you mention him. Why? Because that was the other guy when I mentioned Dante Sauer. He's a little bit different of a player from Dante Sauer and that I would say that Zadarius is more well-rounded in terms of being able to, you know, rush the pastor but also play in the run game.

I remember when Zadarius came out of Kansas. Kentucky. He was raw, but I think in his time in Baltimore, he's proven to be a very, very solid player. And I think his market could be similar to what I just said for Preston Smith in kind of that $10 million per year range. So if not north of that. But I do like his versatility. I like how well-rounded his game is. What do you think Jameson Crowder gets on the open market? I think James and Crowder would be wise to sign a one year. deal to come back to Washington and improve himself so that he can hit the market next year after the 2019 season.

It's always hard to go into free agency coming off of an injury-plagued season, and then unless you just truly want to get out of Washington, to roll the dice by going, taking, say, a one-year deal in a new scheme by going elsewhere. there's a lot of risk in that. And so a lot of free agency and a lot of these decisions in football are risk management decisions. So, you know, you come back to Washington on a one-year deal. I don't know what that value is. Maybe it's one year, $4 or $5 million.

And then you reestablish your market value by having a productive healthy season in 2019. With Colt McCoy, a quarterback potentially. That's a risk, too. That is a risk, too. I mean, you don't know, that goes back to the Antonio Brown situation. Yeah. You talk about James and Crowder. We don't know who's throwing the ball to the receivers in 2019.

You know, is that Colt McCoy? Is it Ryan Fitzpatrick? Who knows? Okay, I'm glad you said Ryan Fitzpatrick, because that's where I wanted to go next. It's my opinion that they're not going to trade for Rosen. I don't know that the Redskins end up getting Antonio Brown, but I bet like hell they're trying. and if they were to land Antonio Brown, to me, the bigger pop for next year is not Colt McCoy starting, and certainly the bigger pop would be Kyler Murray or even trading for Josh Rosen,

but the thing that might make the most sense is someone like Ryan Fitzpatrick, and I would put him ahead of Teddy Bridgewater for me, even though I was a Bridgewater fan, but I just, I haven't seen him play since a near-Cats. catastrophic injury, but I know Fitzpatrick can sling it. Sometimes for the other team, but very often for your own team, what's the market for Ryan Fitzpatrick going to be like? I think it's similar to what it was for Teddy Bridgewater last year, for A.J. McCarran last year. Not quite Josh McCown. Josh McCown got a pretty good one-year deal in New York. It was one-year $10 million. Wow. I didn't know that.

Yeah. It was one year, $10 million. I don't think he gets, I don't think Fitzpatrick gets to that, but I do think that he ends up in that $6 million, $7 million per year range on a one or two-year deal with probably half of that amount. So if we're talking, let's call it a $6 million deal on a one year, that's $3 million guaranteed. Or for talking about $6 million per year on a two-year, that's $6 million guaranteed. Will he get more than Bridgewater? I think he does. I think he should. I mean, to what you just said, we haven't really seen Teddy Bridgewater outside of a week 17 appearance with the Saints last season

where he didn't look exactly great. But he was playing with his, when he's playing with backups. Sure, but, and he looked good in the preseason. Ryan Fitzpatrick, whether, you know, he might throw five touchdowns one week and then five interceptions to next, but we know that he can be productive. We know that he can be a weekend, weekend, week, and weekout starter, and we just haven't seen that from Teddy Bridgewater in a very long time. Do you think, what is your guess as to how the Redskins solve their quarterback situation for 2019?

Well, here's the challenge with Colt McCoy, that he has $2 million guaranteed. It's guaranteed for skill and drink caps, so I'm going to get paid for it. Now, if you decide to move on from Colt McCoy, you decide to swallow the $2 million, you know that some of it will get offset if and when he signs with a lot. another team. You'll save yourself like $1.3 million against a cap by deciding to move on from them. If you decided to do that, then if it were me, if it were me, I would move on from Colt McCoy.

I just swallowed the $2 million to take the $1.3 in saving. I'd sign a player like Ryan Fitzpatrick, and I would try to trade for Josh Rosen. That, that, you've got, you just, you got, there is no young developed, develop, developing player at the quarterback position on the roster. And so even if you don't trade for Josh Rosen, you've got to go get a young guy to develop. And so the alternative is go get Fitzpatrick to be your stopgap starter and go draft a guy. I'm not saying that's the 15th pick, but they just don't have a young guy that they're developing.

Well, that's exactly what my answer was yesterday. Tommy and I were talking about that, and I said it to me it's Fitzpatrick on a one-year year deal, maybe a team option for a second or something like that. And then, you know, maybe you can trade back and get Daniel Jones, you know, and pickups, you know, another pick. Or in the second round, you take Ryan Finley or somebody like that that that you think, you got to love the quarterback, though. I mean, we know this. It's like how many teams have just completely whiffed, you know, more whiffs in the first round with respect to quarterbacks than hits. And you got to be sure of it. And then that gets into the question of who are we as Redskin fans confident is going to evaluate the position well and be sure about it.

So what do you think – so on the Rosen and Antonio Brown discussions, what do you think Brown is going to get – get the Steelers? What are the Steelers going to get for trading Brown? And what do you think the Cardinals would get for trading Rosen? Regarding Antonio Brown, I think the Steelers do get a first round pick for him. I do too. I think that's going to happen. And it seems like there are too many teams, at least according to the reporting, involved for not to be first.

Yeah, I think that's the tough part about the Antonio Brown situation is, you know, the fact that he has been vocal about wanting a new deal. And so from the club that acquires him, you've got to be pretty desperate to give up a one and say that we are going to commit a new contract to you. And it reminds me as like my first year in Washington when there was talk about, trading two ones for Chad Johnson. And, you know, and so when we talk about earlier about a return to the old Redskins, that this is so such a replay of Chad Johnson.

And I'm hoping Washington doesn't do it, but there is a team out there that will do it, that we'll give up the one and give him a new contract. So that's what I think happens with Antonio Brown. Josh Rosen, you know, he didn't exactly wow people last year, but he also had to look at what he was surrounded with. I can't disagree too much with Kurt Warner, who said, you know, probably doesn't get more than a third-round pick. Yep.

The contract is so attractive, though. When you know what quarterbacks get paid in this league, to get a quarterback, the most important position on your team, on your roster at a very cheap rookie contract, that's got to be appealing. Because if you miss, then you know what? You're out of third round pick, and it didn't cost you a ton of money from a cash-and-cap standpoint. And so I think the risk versus the reward makes a ton of sense for Washington, whereas I don't

think it really, the risk versus reward with Antonio Brown doesn't make as much sense. I said to Tommy yesterday to me, if you are a team that's thinking about Josh Rosen, the exercise you have to go through is you have to put him on your 2019 draft board. You've got to put him on your big board, and that's every position quarterback and every other position, and see where he lands. And if he lands at 42 overall, it's a second rounder. If he lands at 58 overall, or 65 overall, it's a third rounder. You really have to evaluate him against the rest of your 2019 draft board.

Yeah, I would think, look, I'm not a college scout, but I would think that evaluators would have Collar Murray and Haskins ahead of him. The question then becomes, how do you feel about Josh Rosen versus Drew Locke? And people think Drew Locke is going to be a first-round pick as well. So therefore, you know, now you're in the conversation in terms of Josh Rosen, like, okay, if you were in this year's class,

if he's the third or fourth guy, that he's a borderline first or second round. round pick. So using kind of your methodology, then you know, you're giving up at a minimum a second round pick for Josh Rosen, which I don't think would exactly be unreasonable. Cooley did a film breakdown of Rosen, all the college guys so far. Cooley thinks that Drew Locke is easily, by the time we get to draft day, Locke's going to be the second quarterback taken ahead of Haskins. He thinks Haskins has bust written all over him. I actually have felt all season long watching Haskins that I wouldn't want him.

next year, you know, maybe five years from now, whatever. And but he, coolly loves Locke, and thinks that most NFL scouts will come to the conclusion that Locke's the second best quarterback, or certain, maybe the best quarterback in the draft, but because Kyler is so intriguing in so many ways, despite what Charlie Casserly said, which is that apparently the interviews did not go very well in Indianapolis.

Lastly, actually two more things for you. Number one, overall, this free agent, class, you know, when we start next week. How would you describe it? Would you describe it as a strong class, weak class, somewhere in between, and which are the positions where you can definitely help yourself? Well, you know, we talked about it earlier, safety. You know, there's a lot of depth at the safety position. You've got all pros and former all pros and Landon Collins and Earl Thomas, Tyrant Matthew, the market joined is coming off the franchise tag, so I was just a ramp, of him.

Eric Weddle is been a very, very, very good player throughout his career for a long time. So you can definitely help yourself there. You know, you lost some of the edge rushers to the franchise tag, so you're not going to see D. Ford, although he might be available via trade. You know, Justin Houston's going to get released. So that's a guy if you're looking for a rusher. You know, he's almost 30 years old, but, you know, there's some rushers. There's some guys who can get after the pastor who are going to be in free agency.

Clay Matthews is 33 years old, so I don't know how much he has left in the tank. So much like the draft, I think there is room to improve your roster or there are players to improve your roster on the defensive side of the ball in this year's free agency class. Free agency class as a whole, it's not great. It's kind of par for the course. but again you can help yourself on defense with this free agent crop and you can help yourself on defense in the draft too I think this year

all right last one you brought it up and it just reminded me of the crazy years and you were in the organization for some of it but seriously whose idea was it to actually offer Cincinnati two first round picks for Chad Johnson and then why in the hell did Mike Brown turn it down Seriously. That was driven a lot by ownership. Of course.

When you think back to like 2007, right, that's the owner with Vinny as kind of the conduit, you know, trying to build the roster. We didn't get that far down the road. We definitely did the kind of the vetting of what a contract could look like for him. but in the end I'm happy it never came to fruition. I mean, that honestly would go down as one of the worst deals of all time. I mean, Antonio Brown, by the way, is a hell of a lot better than Chad Johnson ever thought about being. And Chad Johnson had a good stretch there.

But two first rounders for a wide receiver, it would have been so Redskins to do it, and it would have been on the list of the, you know, along with all of their free agent signings of, you know, the worst deals in NFL history. I mean, I still get a kick out of the fact that we sent Atlanta a third and a fourth for T.J. Duckett and never basically played him. Yeah. Because we were afraid, what, if Philadelphia was going to sign him, I think, at the time, or trade for him is ridiculous. Yep. There are definitely some, you know, this one I don't think is to this level, but, you know, getting Clinton Porter than return for Chant Bailey, you know,

Camp Bailey ends up being a Hall of Famer. It was solid. But the Redskins gave up a second, too. They gave up the second end champ. Yeah, I'm going to say, but in addition to Champ, you know, give up the draft pick, again, it doesn't rise to the level of two firsts for Chad Johnson or the T.J. Duckett trade. But when we know that Chan Bailey is a Hall of Famer,

and you gave up the draft pick in addition, there are some not-so-favorable trades for the Washington Redskins in history. Yeah. that's true um i love catching up with you this was so much fun and and let's do it you know uh during during the off season here a couple more times you can follow j i which i absolutely urge you to do on twitter at salary cap 101 he does a great job with former agents he is a former agent worked in the organization um he just knows this stuff and uh and i i've always enjoyed our conversations and i appreciate the time today

having me and look forward to being on with you again as we go through free agency and the off season. Thank you again, man. All right. Appreciate it, Jay. Always good to catch up with Jay Hullsell. He really knows his stuff, and so we'll stay in touch with him and guys like Joel Corey throughout the off season. A real quick word on launch workplaces. If you're looking for a new place to get work done and you're working from your home, consider launch workplaces. You can find out everything you need to know at launchworkplaces.com. I want to tell you you about their new Bethesda location. If you live in Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Upper Northwest DC, even over the American Legion Bridge in northern Virginia, and you don't want a long commute,

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Okay, a couple of things that we didn't get to on the show. so far. And the first thing is that Charlie Casserly, did you see what he said about Kyler Murray? Yeah. He said that Kyler Murray, basically the word on the interviews coming out of Indy, about Kyler Murray, or some of the worst reports Charlie has ever heard in all of his years in the NFL, that there is some arrogance, that there's a lot of stuff going on there with Kyler Murray, and it's not positive. Lincoln Riley, his coach at Oklahoma, pushed back a little bit today saying that some of these negative reports, including the interview, remember he did with Dan Patrick a few weeks ago, and now on the Charlie Casserly comments. The Lincoln Riley, his college coach,

just said, look, it's not surprising. That's just in the fact that it's this time of year and people are going to say different things. I just hate that people go out and make these comments, and you've never even talked to the two people that's actually coached this kid. You haven't talked to teammates. You went on what one team said, probably a smokescreen, knowing how this draft deal works and the back and forth involved. Lincoln Riley, his college coach at Oklahoma, said Kyler was a tremendous leader for us, tremendous leader, very aggressive. All he cares about is winning, and I think our team took on that personality. without a doubt closed quote.

Look, I trust Charlie and I trust his connections and the people that he knows and his evaluations. But, you know, he said basically some of the things that came out from some of the people that he talked to were some of the worst things he has heard about a player in all of his years. I'm pulling up the quotes. I think it's a situation, though, where both sides can be right that, you know, Charlie can absolutely be hearing these things, and Lincoln Riley can absolutely be right in saying that he's hearing smokescreens as well. Because it is odd that Charlie Castorley is the only person to this point saying that that he's hearing. Well, but we also have the Dan Patrick odd.

You know, odd would be a kind way of putting it. It was, it was weird that interview with Dan Patrick. But I wouldn't personally take anything from the Dan Patrick interview if I were a team. I would sit down and come to the conclusion on my own, sitting with him for, you know, hopefully more than 10 or 15 minutes and talking to people like his college coach and the teammates that you could talk to. But I wanted to actually read the quotes from Casserly. Casserly said that, again, that some of the worst things he's ever heard come out of the combine about a player. Leadership, not good. Study habits, not good.

The board work below not good. not good at all in any of those areas in raising major concerns about what this guy is going to do, closed quote. And then Cassarly had a follow-up quote that said, quote, he better hope Cliff Kingsbury takes him number one because this was not good, closed quote. And then you've got the Lincoln Riley quotes afterwards. I think Arizona is taking him number one. I just think Cliff Kingsbury was hired to run an office. defense with Kyler Murray at the helm or a quarterback like Kyler Murray at the helm, not Josh Rosen.

Josh Rosen and Kyler Murray are not, they don't have many similarities when it comes to quarterbacking. I just think that that's what's going to happen. I still think maybe this is posturing. Maybe the Cardinals are posturing. Maybe the Cardinals don't have any, any thought of drafting Kyler Murray, but they're trying to draw interest from other teams to get a great price for their number one overall. I guess that's in play. If you told me today, I have to wager on yes or no in Arizona at number one overall. I would wager yes. That's how I would bet it, Aaron.

I would. Based on nothing other than Cliff Kingsbury being their head coach. If you want to bet it, I believe I saw that the odds right now, it's even right now. Even money? Not even money, but both him and both are plus 110 right now. For number one pick? Yeah. Anyway, that's enough on that.

There was some interesting college basketball last night. I just wanted to mention, I've already talked about the Duke game earlier in the show. Purdue lost at Minnesota. This Big Ten just has been, I seriously, when Turgeon said after the game, it's the toughest league schedule he's ever faced in all of his years of coaching, a lot of you said there's some excuse making there after the loss to Michigan. and I know what you're saying about the way he handles some of these answers. I hear you loud and clear.

You know, I don't want to hear about the team just got better today off of a loss. I don't want to hear that either. I don't want to hear that. But when he said that about the league, as a fan of Maryland forever for my life and knowing and probably being able to tell you about most years in the ACC and the five years in the Big Ten, I don't know that I remember Maryland-Berry. being in a league top to bottom that was this tough.

Not with this many teams in it. Right. Right. There's probably a time when they were in a seven-team ACC in the 1970s where Wake Forest was horrible. Or Virginia was horrible. Even in the 90s, I feel like there were times when there was probably a solid eight out of the 10 teams or whatever. Nobody in the Big Ten stinks. Even Northwestern, who is dead last in the league, even they have had.

had opportunities in the last few weeks to beat teams like Wisconsin and had a chance to beat Iowa on the road. There isn't a night off in the league. In the ACC, to your point, and I think you're right, if I went through every single season right now in more detail, I might come up with one that I had forgotten. I don't remember a year in which there weren't, you know, at least one or two perceived nights off. You know, hey, not a big deal. We're going to Georgia Tech. They stink this year. Florida State stinks this year or Wake Forest is awful this year.

You know, there were, you had, I mean, before Tony Bennett, there were years where Virginia wasn't very good. Not in the Big Ten this year. And last night, in conference, a couple of other, you know, incredible results, Minnesota beating Purdue.

Purdue was, all they had to do was beat Minnesota on the road, all right, senior night, and beat Northwestern. And they were Big Ten champions, and they lost last night at Minnesota. It was actually a hell of a basketball game. Different than the games, the grinded out games we've been watching, because Minnesota doesn't mind getting it up and down the floor. Maryland plays Minnesota on Friday night. By the way, that pretty much clinched, I think Minnesota's bid. I think if Minnesota loses to Maryland and loses in the

first round of the Big Ten tournament, I think they're still in. I think last night's win solidified their position, and that means that there are eight Big Ten teams going to tournament. I guess Indiana still has a fighting chance. Do they? Yeah. So if they win their final two games, which are, again, no easy nights in the Big Ten, they play Illinois on the road. I think they might be an underdog at Illinois. And then they close with Rutgers. And Rutgers has been raising holy hell in this conference. They just beat Iowa on the road. They beat Minnesota last week. They had a chance at Michigan State. They had the lead at halftime. I think they're up 14 in the first half of that game. But if Indiana wins those first two games, and they're 17 and 14 overall,

you're telling me they're going to be in the tournament? The bubble is so, so weak this year that it's very possible. Wow. You're right. I think Maryland, by the way, still as we sit here today, Lenardi has them as a five still. I want them to get that win against Minnesota. And by the way, the win by Minnesota over Purdue last night, if you're interested for you Maryland fans out there, they can still get the double by and the way they get the double by is they have to beat Minnesota, Wisconsin has to lose one of their final two games

they play at Ohio State and Iowa at home I think right? I think that's it. You're shaking your head. For some reason I thought they were both on the road but it might not be. Nope, Iowa at home. Just pull it up and then at Ohio State.

So they've got to lose one of those two and then Purdue has to beat Northwestern and Michigan State has to beat Michigan. Yes. If those things happen, Maryland's got the double by. If they don't, Maryland's going to be the five-seat. I'd prefer if they were the four-seed and didn't have to face somebody at the bottom of the league

on a Thursday night, you know, Thursday night round to get into the quarterfinals. Anyway, yeah, there was some good basketball last night. Kansas, for the first time in 14 years, did not win the Big 12. That will go to Texas Tech. They lost last night. blown out at Oklahoma, so that ends their regular season title streak at 14. I've watched them.

They're still going to be a three or a four seed in the tournament. So they didn't win the Big 12. They're still, what have they won, 20-something games, and they're going to be a three-or-four seed, so it's not like they stink. But Texas Tech has had a hell of a year. Kansas State, too. Kansas State has a chance to win the Big 12 regular season also. That's actually been a pretty good league this year and another league that really doesn't have a lot of weakness at the bottom. All right. If you listen to this show and you know others that want to listen to it, I mention this all the time, just tell them if they don't do podcasts and they don't know what iTunes or Apple

podcasts or Spotify or Google Play or tune in or Stitcher, if they don't know what any of those things are, just tell them to go to the Kevin Sheehan Show.com. And if you listen to this show and you haven't rated us or you haven't subscribed, do it. It doesn't cost you anything. It'll help us out. All right. Let's take a few moments because I'm going to bring somebody onto the show that I am interested in talking to. And hopefully everyone else out there will be as well.

Alan Stein Jr. is a world-renowned, you know, public speaker, but he spent many, many years training and working with some of the elite players, training them. Kevin Durant, he worked with. He was a coach and a trainer over at Damatha for many years. He's a basketball guy, which is why Alan and I sort of hit it off when we met each other a few weeks back. He's got a book out right now called Raise Your Game. I'm assuming you can get it wherever you can pick up a book, Amazon, etc. Jay Billis wrote the forward for the book. Alan Stein Jr. joins us right now.

And I want to hear about the book. And I also want to get your thoughts. one of the reasons I thought about having you on was just to talk about the Redskins organization. You work with a lot of companies, with a lot of organizations, trying to help them become more efficient, more functional, and successful. And so I thought we'd get to that. But first of all, tell us, you know, for those that don't know you, tell us a little bit about your background and then some of the stories you've got in the book. Well, you said it up perfectly, Kevin. I mean, I've spent my entire,

life in a basketball bubble, fell in love with the game at five or six years old, was able to play all the way up through college, but then have made my career in basketball for the past 20 years until I decided to make an intentional shift over into the corporate world. So the game of basketball has been really good to me, and I'll forever be indebted to the players I've had a chance to work with and be mentored by some amazing coaches. And I now take all of that, and I share with businesses and organizations, you know, on how they can improve culture and performance and accountability and cohesion, because I find there's very high utility and very high transfer between what works in the sports world and what works in the business world and in our lives,

you know. Are athletes in general people who have played competitive athletics at a high level, you know, especially people who aren't playing professionally, therefore they're available in their mid-20s as a first hire or a second hire. Do businesses, do they look at a competitive athlete different than perhaps someone else and another resume that doesn't have competitive athletics on it? You know, I'm friends with lots of CEOs and executives and managers, and many of those folks. They came from a sports background themselves, so they have tremendous respect and appreciation for those that come up in a similar fashion.

And yes, they intentionally look for and recruit people that have been a part of a team. When you've been a part of a team, especially from the athletic world, that usually lends to the fact that you're unselfish and that you know how to be a part of something bigger than yourself. You know how to be a good teammate and how to serve others and fill other people's buckets.

You understand the importance of habits and doing the little things and putting in the work during the unseen hours. So yeah, a good portions of organizations that I work with do favor folks that have come from that type of background. I was not always in this field that I'm in now broadcasting. Long before I got into broadcasting, I was in sort of the business world as an entrepreneur. I'm in multiple startups, Alan. And that's how you and I have a mutual friend because of that.

And that's how I met you. but I always remember thinking, you know, when you interview and you hire people, you want the person that's going to be a relentless, you know, hard worker, somebody who gets it, somebody who's a great teammate. But really, sometimes the difference is in their competitive makeup. You know, are they highly competitive? Do they hate to lose more than even that they love to win? And I think that it makes sense that smart CEOs, smart managers looking to hire people look for that characteristic. Most certainly. And, you know, I'll piggyback on top of that because you nailed it perfectly. But athletes, especially those that were, you know, really good in high school and then even were able to play in college or professional, they never get complacent. No matter what they've achieved or how good their performance, they're always looking to get better. And that's definitely a trait that you want contagious in any organization.

You know, complacency and apathy can destroy any team or any organization. So, yeah, once again, having athletes or those with an athlete mentality, they're always looking for ways to sharpen their sword and master their craft. You know, you've coached, too, as have I. And I, you know, you've dealt with parents before, and those are some of the more interesting experiences. coaching, especially younger kids, than the kids themselves. But one of the things I've always felt, and I don't know if this is true or not,

it's just based on observation, is you know, you'll have a parent who will be upset about his kid's performance and they're living in many ways vicariously through that child and their athletic exploits or lack thereof. But I believe that competitiveness is innate, that you don't teach somebody to be a killer competitor, that you're born with it. Am I right or wrong? You know, that's a very interesting, interesting way to look at it. And I'm not trying to play both sides of the sense. I do think it is part nature and part nurture. I do believe that, you know, you take somebody like a Michael Jordan, I absolutely think he was wired differently at birth, that there was something in his DNA that is

different from a competitive standpoint than everyone else. But I do believe, like many things, those areas can be improved through proper conditioning. And that, you know, again, it's the way that we model and teach young people on how to give their best effort and how to have the best attitude and not necessarily emphasizing the final score, but emphasizing that what you want to be competitive with is giving the best effort and having the best attitude that you're capable of. So it doesn't necessarily have to be competitive from a standpoint

you know, did I beat you or did I lose to you and does that upset me or not? But the competitive drives do always do your best and to put in the work during the unseen hours that's required to be elite, I absolutely know that that is something that can be taught and can be modeled and can be conditioned. And I put that question in the context of parents because, and I'm sure you have faced this before when parents say, why isn't, you know, why isn't, you know, little Adam, why isn't, you know, little Adam, why isn't he, you know, trying harder? And you want to say to the parents,

Adam's such a nice kid. He's a nice kid. There's nothing wrong with being a nice kid. But there are a couple of other kids out there that this is really serious to them. And sometimes I think for that kind of kid, it's hard to raise it to the level to where the parents perhaps want to. You know, there's a couple of interesting stories going on right now, before we get to the book in the NBA.

First of all, what do you make of LeBron James' current position of more likely than not being on a team that's not going to qualify for the playoffs. We've seen in recent games his defensive effort hasn't been what it's been. He took an inbound pass the other night and just threw it against the back of the backboard. We saw a couple of weeks ago where he was sitting two or three seats away on the bench from the closest player sort of by himself. What is your take on LeBron and what he's going through right now And the kind of personality he has to handle this. I think LeBron, frustration usually comes when there's a difference between our expectation and reality.

And my guess is, and I'm not privity any more information than you are on this, although I've met and worked with LeBron for many years at his skills academy. I think he's thought that the situation he was getting into in Los Angeles is much different than what's actually transpiring. I think it's proving to be a lot more work than he thought it was going to be that folks aren't necessarily performing to the level that he's expecting them to perform. You know, I mean, in his situations in both Cleveland and Miami, I think there was greater harmony between what he expected to happen and what was actually happening. And he's showing signs of frustration right now. And, you know, of course, when you have someone that's, you know, an all-time great, an amazing competitor, an amazing player, an incredible talent, it's often, they can get very frustrated when other people don't live

by the same code that they live and when other people can't do the same thing that they can do. So, yeah, I mean, it's obviously, I know Adam Silver wishes they make the playoffs because, boy, that's good money for them, but, yeah, I think he's really getting frustrated and, you know, everything's happening so fast. I'm sure I wish he probably wishes he could take a beat and take a week or two just the collective thoughts and take a, you know, a breath and then have a more strategic plan on how to corral the troops and get them ready. But he knows he's up against the clock and that every day that goes by mathematically, they're less and less likely to make the playoffs. And I'm sure he's

getting all sorts of pressure, you know, on how that's going to affect his legacy. You know, we go from talking about him making nine straight Eastern Conference finals and how that may never, ever be duplicated to then going over to the West and not even being able to make the playoffs, I'm sure that's heightening the frustration. Yeah, I'm really surprised. I know a lot of people that I, that I talked to before the season started, said that it was going to be a struggle for the Lakers. And I just thought, you know, it's LeBron. LeBron took Cleveland teams that had nothing to 65 wins in the NBA finals. And I know that's in the East, but still, he can't make the playoffs with the Lakers. And I actually think the Lakers have some pieces around him, not the best

pieces around him, but I'm surprised by it. The one thing, you know, a big part of the debate about LeBron, and I guess this has been settled, you know, in recent years about how he's come through in pressure situations, where, you know, for a long period of time, he seemed to, you know, almost shrink from some of those occasions. I remember the finals, you know, the Miami-Dalice finals in particular, when Dallas beat him in his first year in Miami, there were games in which LeBron appeared to be hiding on the floor. I mean, the best player in the game, hiding on the floor. That confidence thing is really fleeting, isn't it? And how do you deal with the player that has lost it for a period of time?

Well, and one other thing, and I'll definitely answer that because that's an incredibly insightful perspective. You know, he had that stretch, and I don't know offhand how many games he missed with the groin injury that he suffered on Christmas Day. You're talking about this year. Prior to this year, yeah, prior to that, I mean, the Lakers were, they were on course to make the playoffs. And I think when that sidelined him and all he could do was watch everything crumble in his absence, that also increased his frustration level and increased his urgency that when he came back, it was like, okay, we got to get this going. And when everyone wasn't ready to get it going to the level that he was, that once again heightened frustration.

Because if I'm not mistaken, I mean, he's one of the most. durable athletes that we've ever seen in the NBA. I mean, he rarely misses more than a couple of games each season, and I think this is the longest stint that he had ever been out. So you take the pressures of being in L.A., you take the pressures of moving to the West and taking on a new team, and then he's out for two to three weeks. I think all of it's just kind of the perfect storm that adds that frustration.

But as far as confidence is concerned, you know, confidence really only comes from one thing and one thing only. and that's demonstrated performance. I mean, the only way you truly get confident is to put in the work and to do the work. And, you know, that's why the best shooters in the world, the Steph Curry's, and then, of course, you know, previously the Reggie Miller's and the Ray Allen, those guys put in so much work during the unseen hours. And millions and millions of purposeful reps making shots.

That's why they're incredibly confident shooters when the game's on the line. And then, of course, when you start making buzzer beaters and hitting shots to win games, then that heightens your confidence. And I think earlier in his career, LeBron didn't have enough of those quote-unquote reps to earn the confidence to be a closer and to be the guy that will put the game on the line. But I think since then he has, and I don't think he shies away from big moments anymore. That makes total sense to me. But aren't there some guys that just when they walk out onto the floor,

they believe that they're the best player out there, whether they are or not? they should be taking that last shot versus the Hall of Famer or the All-Star. Aren't some people just sort of wired that way to a degree? Now, they probably had results in demonstrated success, as you mentioned, along the way. But, I mean, is there the rare example of the guy that's almost delusional as to what he's capable of? Oh, absolutely. And that's, yes.

And part of that, and I think you said it, some of that's just in somebody's wiring. they just have a swagger about them and everything that they do that they believe they're elite. And some of those guys, I mean, it borderlines on arrogance and narcissism. I mean, and that can sometimes be your biggest downfall, but they almost, as you said, delusionally think they're better than they are. But yeah, it's a combination of that. But the guys that have put in the work, they know they deserve the right to make the game-winning shot. And the guys that don't, because it comes very clear.

Now, of course, when we're talking about the NBA, we're talking about roughly the 450 best players in the world. I mean, I know there's some players playing overseas that are absolutely good enough to play in the NBA. But you're talking about the elite of the elite. But even of the elite, they're guys that know they don't put in the work required to be on LeBron's level or Curry's level or Durant's level. And it's very obvious when the game's on the line, which guys want the ball and which guys don't. All right, tell us, you've worked with Kevin Durant, you've worked with a lot of players during the course of your career. Tell us about Durant in particular, because obviously he's from here and, you know, there was that, you know, that stretch a few years ago where, you know, Ernie Grunfeld decided to clear a bunch of cap space and hope that he could bring Kevin Durant back here. I never thought he was coming back here, Alan, never did.

But tell us about Kevin Durant because he's obviously a freakish, you know, player. I mean, a unique player in the history of the game, you know, being at that size, being able to shoot from where he shoots from and score the way he scores. But at the same time in recent years, you know, there have been some off-putting moments for some fans, you know, a couple of weeks ago when, you know, he went off on the media about, you know, they want to know about free agency. He's signing these one-year deals. This is going to be a major topic.

Tell us about Kevin and what you did with him and what you think of him. Well, I absolutely think the world of Kevin, but I'll admit that I'm incredibly biased because I met Kevin when he was 15 years old. He was a sophomore in high school at the time, and I watched him play for a few minutes, and a few things were very obvious to me. One, he loves the game of basketball. He was playing his tail off, but boy, he was playing with a big smile on his face. Two, even at 15 years old, his footwork and his shooting mechanics were flawless. I mean, he was fundamentally sound, even at a very early age. Three, he had a very high basketball IQ.

I mean, for a 15-year-old, I mean, he had a basketball IQ that rivaled a lot of high school coaches that I knew. But, of course, at the time, and it's still an issue now, I mean, he was very slight a frame back in those days. I mean, people can't believe. He plays now at 225 pounds, I think it is, and he was 180 pounds soaking wet the day I'd met him. So he's 45 pounds heavier than he was when he started playing in high school. And it was clear to me that lack of strength and power was his biggest Achilles heel, that that would be the only thing that would prevent him from playing at a very high level. And, you know, since I was a basketball strength and conditioning coach, you know, that was perfect for me.

I mean, I was hoping to have a chance to work with an elite level kid. What he needed was exactly what I could provide. I remember taking him through a workout. It was over in PG County. It was a facility. It used to be called Run and Shoot. It's a big basketball spot, and it's changed name several times since. But took him over there, and I absolutely hammered him.

I mean, in the first 30 minutes, I mean, he was on the floor. And I can remember that it was like yesterday, and, you know, it's been over a decade. And, you know, Kevin had never gone through any type of structured workout before. And he didn't say much during the workout. So when I asked him if he liked it, he was as serious as can be. And I still chuckled because he said, no, I didn't like the workout. But I know this is the kind of stuff I need to do if I ever want to play in the NBA. So when can I see you again?

And I remember being blown away by the maturity of this 15-year-old kid that was willing to make the sacrifice and was willing to come in for workouts that he didn't enjoy, but he knew that he needed to do. At that moment, I knew there was something different about him and that he had the potential to take his genetic talent with the skill sets that he had honed at that point and combine that with a mindset of, I'm going to make sacrifices and I'm going to do whatever it takes to be a great player. I knew he was something special. Now, you know, I mean, in full transparency, there's no way I would have guessed on that day that he would end up becoming arguably the second best player in the world. but I'm not surprised that he is. Looking back on it to know that he had that type of talent with that type of mindset, I'm not surprised he's as good as he is.

What was his height? What was his height at 15? I mean, he was still in the 6-9, 6-10 area. I mean, he was a tall drink of water and he was very lanky, but was still incredibly coordinated. I mean, he was doing things on the perimeter with the ball that you see kids in high school, they're 5-10 doing the same thing. So it was really impressive. And, you know, he has grown so much.

I mean, Kevin was a boy of very few words back then. And, you know, now the fact that he's in national commercials and he holds press conferences, you know, he's grown every bit as much off the court as he has on. And, you know, I don't excuse any of the, maybe the mishap C-tat. I mean, I'm very well aware of the one you're talking about a couple weeks ago with the media. but where I can give a guy like him some empathy is because I've seen a peek behind the curtain and I've had a chance to be around some of these guys,

it's very hard for normal people like you and I and a lot of the people listening to fathom what it's like to live in a fish bowl and to have every single thing you say or do documented on social, documented as a headline. And, you know, I look at my own life. In the past three weeks, have I said or done anything that I probably

I probably wish I would have said or done differently? Yeah, absolutely. But the rest of the world doesn't know about it because I'm not famous. So I think it's important to give some grace to these guys and say, hey, maybe he had a moment of weakness, or maybe he had a moment where he was in a mood or something just hit him the wrong way. You know, I've been around these guys before, and, you know, a guy like Kevin will sign 99 autographs in a row for kids after a game. And then he's got to catch the team bus. and the 100th kid asks for an autograph and he can't do it.

And that kid's going to have a negative feeling about Kevin for the rest of his life because he thinks he got big-timed or that Kevin wouldn't sign something for him. And it's taken completely out of context. It's like, man, these guys can only do so much. And unfortunately, I don't think we paint the positives that they do near in the light of some of the negative. So I know I'm completely biased because of my relationship with Kevin, but I try to give a lot of these guys that are in that world.

some grace and compassion because I can't fathom being under the microscope that they're under. I say stupid shit every day on radio and now on this podcast. And actually, I said something yesterday, as you were saying that I wrote a note to myself and I'm going to get back to it. So those that are listening right now, I'm going to ask Alan about the difference between the 1963 Celtics and Lakers and the 2019 NBA players. I'll get to that in a moment. But I'm talking with Alan Stein Jr. He's got book out called Raise Your Game. He's trained and worked out a lot of NBA players and he's a performance coach. He's a world-renowned speaker and he's a friend of a good friend of mine, which is why I wanted to have him on the show today. Tell everyone what they'll get in the book.

Or from the book. Yeah, the book really is a summation of everything that I've learned over the past 20 years, having been mentored by some of the game's best coaches and having been able to work with, work for and observe the game's best players and taking all of those lessons and translating them so that folks can apply them to business or apply them to their lives. I mean, one of the things that's great about all of these things that I learned through basketball is they have such high utility. I mean, the things that I've learned from players and coaches, they're making me a better father to my three children. They make me a better professional speaker. They make me better as an entrepreneur. They make me better at being able to teach businesses how to improve these

different areas. So these characteristics have very, very high utility and very high transfer. So I firmly believe that raise your game can help readers raise their game and whatever it is that they want to improve, whether it's relationships on a personal level or organizational performance with their business. I'm very confident that the book can deliver. You know, one of the things, I've had conversations about this on the air over the years with various people is we try to define, you know, what an athlete is, you know, what constitutes a really good athlete. And, you know, there's this one sense of size, speed, strength, agility, leaping ability, all that stuff. And then there's the person who doesn't have the speed or the size or the strength, but is highly coordinated. And you mentioned, you mentioned. You mentioned. You mentioned about Durant, you know, as a tall drink of water at 15 years old, how many times have, you know, we seen the super tall kid at 12, 13, 14 years old that just lacks the coordination. And basketball is one of those sports. It's totally dependent on sort of coordination and being,

there are some sports you can play where if you're just fast and you're strong, you can play. Football has positions like that. Basketball, you can't hide. the lack of total coordination. So there's that kind of athlete, too, the guy that can do everything. You know, he's a decent tennis player. He's a decent golfer. He's a decent basketball player. He's got great hand-eye coordination, but he's not strong.

He's not fast. You know, he's not big. How do you define what a really good athlete is? It's really, it's context-specific. I mean, yes, you do have the folks, and, you know, I'm 43 years old, So when I hear something like that, I immediately think of somebody like Bo Jackson who could have been good at just about anything that he wanted. I mean, you're talking about someone that could play two different professional sports. And I'm well on the bet if he would have picked up basketball at a young age.

He probably could have played basketball at a high level. So you do have that athletic component. But I will say with that, sometimes we put way too much emphasis on the eyeball test. I mean, clearly, when LeBron James walks into a room, anyone with eyesight can see that he was born with some physical tools that most people weren't bored with. And we do tend to over-emphasize strength and power. But, you know, one of my all-time favorite basketball players is Steve Nash. And I will say Steve Nash is one of the best athletes that the NBA has ever seen. And most people look at me like I'm crazy when I say that because he obviously was not a high flyer or a dunker.

But when you take in other components of athleticism, as you just mentioned, eye hand coordination, balance, spatial awareness, cardiovascular conditioning, the ability to accelerate and decelerate. I mean, he was off the charts in those aspects. So you take somebody like Dwight Howard, who's giant, he's chiseled, he's muscular, he can jump, he can dunk, but then he doesn't perform very well in some of those other categories. where Steve Nash would be off the chart. So I think that's part of it. But then, of course, you also have the skill set and the mindset portion. I mean, I'm a huge Larry Bird fan and always have been. And, you know, according to, quote, unquote, the athleticism of, say, combine measurements,

I mean, Larry would have failed miserably. He's never the fastest guy on the court. He could barely jump on top of a curb. But, you know, you take his skill sets and his mindset and his mindset and his relentlessness and his competitiveness and you put all of those things together. I mean, he is an athlete by that definition. So that's when you take somebody like a Michael Jordan who combines all of those things. He has the raw athleticism where he could probably be good at any sport he played, but he has the mindset, he has the skill acquisition, he has the heart, he has the motor, and you

put all of those things together, and that's when you get kind of a once-in-a-generation type athlete. You know, because you take somebody like Usain Bolt, you know, clearly in a couple of metrics, he's world-class and elite, but that doesn't necessarily mean Hussein Bolt can play in the NBA or play in the NFL or play in the Major League Baseball or anything like that. So it's always a very interesting discussion for sure. Well, you know, the comparison over the years, and we've done a lot of it on the shows that I've been involved in, you know, RG3 really was this straight line track guy, you know, for the lack of a better description. and I always describe RG3 as the guy that if he's playing pickup basketball and he's coming down on a three on two fast break, he's going to dribble it right into one of the two defenders. He didn't have, you know, the other part, the vision. And Russell Wilson, on the other hand, may not have had, you know, RG3's 4, you know, 43, 4 speed, but the vision and the spatial awareness, as you've mentioned. And that to me, in a lot of these sports, in context is everything in the sport,

context, you know, makes a big difference. But I think about basketball. And I want that, you know, coordinated Steve Nash, sees everything two steps ahead of everybody else player before I want the guy that walks into the room and looks like the best athlete physically I've ever seen. Absolutely. And, you know, it's funny. I just posted a couple of tweets about this. And they always create some debate, which is one of the things I love to do on social. But, you know, everyone's talking about, and I've felt this way for the past 20 years. I believe the NFL way over indexes and overemphasizes combine results. I think they put way too much into that.

I think that should be a very small piece of the puzzle. But the stuff, it's simply not practical. And, you know, we need to be looking at transfer and utility. First of all, regardless of what position you play, you will never, ever run 40 yards straight, uninterrupted on a football field. Not even on a kickoff coverage. You don't do that. you know, you have to be able to sidestep at least one or two steps to move around, you know, the other players. But they put so much stock into that. And I laugh too. I mean, these guys are coming out of a track stance.

They're basically wearing their underwear and track shoes. Like if you're going to have someone run the 40, you might as well put some pads in a helmet on them because that's what they're going to have to do when they play. Yeah. I just think they put way too much into that. And, you know, when you look at all of the different positions in football, you know, the ability to start and stop and change direction. You know, those things are vital for running backs, for cornerbacks, for wide receivers, and yet those are the ones that all we care about is if they can run a 4-4 or a 4-3. I just think they put weight-chiness. I think a lot of people agree with you. I think even the NFL teams, you know, use this combine. Really, the interview portion, being able to sit down face-to-face for 10 to 15 minutes with these players,

is a much bigger takeaway than, you know, what they did the shuttle run in. I wanted to bring this up with you because yesterday on the show, I had watched something earlier this week or over the weekend. I can't even remember now, but NBA TV had the 63 NBA finals on. Lakers Celtics, 1963, Game 6 from the L.A. Sports Arena. And they had it on as it was broadcast. It was like the, I don't know if it was ABC. I think it was ABC, but it was the actual broadcast of the game. So it wasn't film, you know, and it wasn't.

slowed down. You were able to watch it. It was black and white. It was not in color. It was black and white. But I'm watching this, Alan, the other night. And I said to Tom, my co-host two days a week and my co-host on radio for eight years, seven and a half years, I said, Tommy, I'm watching these 63 NBA finals. It's Jerry West and Elgin Baylor. And for the Celtics, it's Russell and it's Coozy and it's Havlice. And I'm telling you that D'Mathas team, this year could have beaten either one of those two teams. And, you know, it's an exaggeration.

I understand that these were men in high school. But I've watched games, you know, from the 70s and 80s. And there's a difference, but it's not nearly the difference of what I saw from like 1963 to the 70s and 80s. I'm telling you, Jerry West, there was no explosion to his game. He was an average, he was an average at best ball handler. He's the logo, and I'm sitting there watching Jerry West thinking, I've coached some kids, some high school kids, that I think would rip it from him three or four times in this game.

Now, there was not a huge emphasis on defense. You could see that from the game. But I guess it's a long way of getting to this physical evolution discussion and how you would compare one era to another. How do you think about that in terms of the players you train today and maybe a player like, you know, Larry, Bird or Magic Johnson or Julia serving from the 80s? What are the big differences? I'm much more in alignment with you and I've always felt that way. Now, of course,

that's not Jerry West's fault. No. Back then, he's playing with, he's under the training and the nutrition and the know-how that they had at the time. He's playing against the competition that they had at the time and he was clearly the best against that competition. But that's part of what's changed so much, especially in the game of basketball. I mean, And it is now a global sport. I mean, you go from probably having hundreds of thousands of people that played worldwide back in the 50s to hundreds of millions that play today. So, yeah, the evolution from an understanding of the game, you know, I mean, especially at the youth levels. I mean, you know, you see that as much as I do.

At the youth levels, you know, there's kids are getting more involved. They're getting more coaching. They're getting more training. Everything has evolved. So it is really difficult to compare different generations. I mean, it's almost as if, and I think you just teed it up perfectly. You've kind of got the 70s and before. You've got the 80s and 90s, kind of the magic bird in Jordan era,

and then you've got everything after. And it's really hard to cross-pollinate and to compare different generations. I mean, obviously, I would be a fool to say that Wilts wasn't a great player. But when you look at most of the times Wilt was going up against the 6-1 white guy, I understand why he was able to score the way he did. I mean, when you look at his statistics when he played against Bill Russell versus when he played against everybody else, it's like night and day. And that is not to take anything away from him or his legacy, but it's just sheer fact. I mean, if you were to pull Shaq out and put him in a time machine and have him go and have George Miken guard him, Shack would have put up 100 points, no question.

And then, of course, when you talk about the 80s and 90s, and then now into the 2000s, the rules have changed significantly as well. I mean, they want to protect the star players. I mean, I grew up watching Jordan, and they used to beat him to hell, and he would still score 50. Imagine what he would do today when you can't even touch a guy. I mean, Jordan would average 60 points a game if you were able to pull him out of,

put them in a time machine to be able to play today. So it is tough to make those comparisons, but there's no denying just simply the body types and the improvement in size, the improvement in athleticism. I mean, just look at LeBron's physical makeup. Compared to Jordans. Look at Magic Johnson's physical makeup, because both of them are six-nine. Right. But the body composition and the movement and the athleticism is completely different.

Now, I'll always believe that Magic is one of the. the best to ever play. His IQ and his skills. He's my number. He's my number one. And I know that's crazy with Jordan and, but magic's always been my number one for what you're just about to say, I'm pretty sure. And there's, and there's nothing wrong with that. That's the beautiful part about this is, you know, when you look at basketball, you know, people always want to look at what the best player can do individually, but ultimately, if this is a team game, then it should be on the merit of how good do they make everyone else? And are they a facilitated? to raise the game, cheek plug for my book, for everybody else.

And yes, with that in context, it'd be hard to argue that magic, you know, wasn't the best. I mean, if you isolate them, you know, then that's when you can look at different players. But yeah, and it's funny, too, because all of these guys have different skill sets and they brought different things to the table, and it's very hard to make comparisons, you know. It'd be like if you and I right now, we had to say, you know, who are the most beautiful supermodels in the world. You can list two or three of them, and that might be who you believe is most beautiful. I can list two or three of them because I think they're beautiful.

But let's be honest, they're all beautiful. So same thing with these players. I mean, you know, especially when you're talking about the top 10 that have ever played the game, it's really hard to go wrong. And you could probably make a legit argument for any of them to be in that number one poll position. But it's nice just to be able to sit back and say how remarkable these guys are in all of these different areas. You know, it's interesting as you talked about the, rules and you focused in a little bit on defense, you know, once they loosened the hand check

rules several years ago, that made it less, there are still some great defenders, but it made it less defensible than it was during the 90s in the early 2000s when you could literally, you know, hand check and mug and physically force, you know, the offense to start further out. I also think, and I, this is just my view, that we have been in this era of the last 10 years maybe, I don't know what the time frame is, where we now have two, maybe three, maybe four dozen, but certainly two to three dozen players that are truly uncheckable, meaning you cannot defensively, with the rules without hand-checking, you cannot, you know, one-on-one stay in front of that player. It's impossible. We started to see this, you know, several years ago,

but now there are two dozen of them that you cannot stop from breaking down a defense, which leads to either an easy bucket or an easy pass to an easy shot. I don't see it, but you're right about the 90s. I mean, there was a whole lot of hand-checking and mugging, yet the 80s games you watch, I didn't find the Celtics of the Lakers to be very good defensive teams compared to what we saw with the Bulls of the 90s or some of the teams, the Pistons, some of the Detroit teams and San Antonio teams of the early and mid-2000s.

Oh, absolutely. No, without question. And that, you know, the most important part for us to all step back. I mean, you and I are purists and we love the sport. But let's not forget, these guys are not paid to play basketball. These guys are paid to sell tickets and to sell advertising. This is an entertainment business. So the league is always going to do whatever is going to get more viewership, and more butts in the seats.

And scoring is what does that. So they will change the rules to protect the star players and to make sure that you do have 30 guys that can score at will because that's what people want to see. And then coaches and teams are tasked with learning how to win despite these rule changes and being able to put an emphasis on defense. I mean, you know, when you can't zone and do certain things in the NBA, I mean, it is definitely geared towards the offensive players

because that's what sells. And yeah, looking back, I mean, what I also think is funny, I mean, if you were to go back to some of those Jordan Piston series, we know where Jordan was trying to get over the hump with the bad boys, I mean, could you imagine how many of those would be considered flagrant ones or flagrant teams now? I mean, you would have had players, you would have had players ejected in the first two minutes of every single game. So that's another thing that has changed completely. I mean, now anything even remotely, you know, as an additional hard foul is going to get reviewed and there's going to be a penalty sent down from the least. league and you could miss time. And it's just, it's amazing the way they've changed. But, you know,

I still think the game is a beautiful game. I still love watching, you know, the NBA, especially come playoff times. And it's, it's just one of those ones where every team, at least they're playing with the same set of rules. So it's not like it favors anyone over anyone else. And it definitely rewards the best offensive players. And that's why you have a team like Golden State. Maybe someone will be thrown them this year. But, I mean, they're just remarkable. because they have all of the offensive tools and all of the offensive weapons that makes them almost impossible to stop in a seven-game series. Two more basketball questions, and then we'll end it with a little Redskins talk and just get your thoughts on them organizationally. Sure.

How important as you are evaluating a young shooter or a young, you know, off-guard, point guard, you know, how important is how when you're talking about high school to college and then college- to the NBA is how quick the releases. That's certainly an important component, and one of the things that I would always talk to players about when they were working on their game in the unseen hours was to make sure you're working at a pace that will transfer to a game. One of the biggest mistakes players make is they shoot at a very casual pace when they're by themselves in the gym. They're more concerned with just getting up a certain number of shots or making a number

of shots that they don't condition themselves to shoot. at the pace that they'll need to to even be able to get it off. And even in the high school level, I mean, you and I are both fans of high school teams in this area. We share a love for the Whitman Vikings and a good friend. Big game tonight.

Yep, Coach Lund. Big game tonight. Yep. What it takes to be able to get a shot off in a Montgomery County public school game is not even the same as what it takes to get it off if you were watching, you know, Gonzaga played to Mesa.

When the athleticism and the length and the height and the quickness all goes up, then you have to be able to get your shot off quicker. And it goes up from levels in high school. You know, when you go from playing in middle school to JV, it goes up. When you go from JV to varsity, it goes up. If you were to go from public school to private school in this area, it would go up. It would certainly go up when you go to college. And a lot of that is because the defenders, as I just mentioned, they're bigger, they're stronger,

they're faster, they have more length, they're quicker, and that's what dictates it. But ultimately, you know, it also depends on the size of. of the player. If you're a 5-10 shooting guard, you're going to need to have a quicker release than if you're a 6-8 shooting guard because if you're 6-8, the length and the size of the defender plays less of a role in your ability to get the shot off. But that is absolutely one of the most important ones. But people also have to realize that when it comes to quickness of shot, it's not just the release. It's also the shot preparation that needs to be taken care of. getting set. Yes, your footwork, your hands ready, you know, a good portion of your shot,

you need to be ready before you even catch the ball. So if you study a player like a JJ Reddick, who has, I mean, he has a quick release, but he doesn't have the quickest release at all time. But watch him get ready. He has so much of his work ahead of time. Yeah, when he's coming off of the screen and he's already got his feet and his hips facing the basket, he's got 10 fingers facing the ball. He's already low, so all he has to do is go up instead of going up, down, and back up to shoot. He's doing so much work ahead of time that it allows him to be that much quicker. And then you take someone like Stefan Curry, who does all of the pre-work and happens to have one of the quickest releases of all time. And that's why it's almost impossible to prevent him from getting his shot off.

You know, you mentioned something in the course of that answer. My high school alma mater, the Walt Whitman Vikings over here in Bethesda, and a guy that you and I both know in Coach Lund, Chris Lund, has been a good friend of mine, for many years now, and I find them to be one of the most underrated coaches in the entire area, and you don't get a lot of great ones typically in the county, and he is one of them. But you reminded me, and it's for me, having grown up here and gone to public school, and having had a lot of friends that were in private school and played, and whether it was the IAC or the WCAC and friends who are now, you know, in those situations with their kids,

it is so much different in this area than it was when even I was in high school or probably when you were in high school. The public schools just don't keep any talent in the schools anymore. The difference between the IAC and public schools is big, but the difference between the Catholic League, the WCAC and the public schools in Montgomery, Fairfax, or even PG County is just overwhelmingly. You know, it, back when I was in high school, a lot of talented kids stayed in their public school. They may have been recruited a little bit, but they stayed. Now it seems like nobody stays. Yeah, they don't.

And it is a shame, especially for somebody like Coach Lund. And one of the reasons that he's a remarkable coach is because he's at the mercy of whoever lives in Whitman District and whichever players stay. And he has to be able to work with that. Whereas my good friend and mentor Mike Jones over to Matha, you know, he has a lot more to say with who he's going to coach because he can recruit from different areas and so forth. And he's an equally brilliant coach. That's not a slight on him. But that's the biggest difference.

And yes, that has changed tremendously over the last 20 to 25 years as youth in high school basketball have grown to become big business. And parents realize that, you know, my secondary education is going to fall on this. And really, what I found, and I know this because having worked at DeMatha, and part of my job would be to help recruit good kids to come to DeMatha, you know, it was never about, is our coach better than your coach? Because it wasn't about playing the comparison game. I mean, Mike Jones is one of the finest coaches that I have ever seen in any sport at any level. But that was never the sticking point.

The main thing to be able to say to a parent was twofold. One, we have more and deeper competition at a school like DeMatha. So if your child comes here, he's going to be playing against better players, not just in games, but in every workout and every practice, he's going to be pushed harder because he'll be going up against better players. I mean, if I was recruiting your son, Kevin, I could say, hey, every day your son is going to be matched up against the potential McDonald's All-American. That's going to be tremendous for his growth. But the real big one is, and this is to no fault of a coach like Chris Lund, he's really handcuffed by what he's allowed to do outside of the basketball season.

He's not allowed to work with his kids as much as Coach Jones is at the MAPA. Coach Jones can work with the kids at the math of 365 days a year, can hold weight room workouts, film workouts, can do individual workouts. So then it just comes down to share coaching and repetition. You know, I could tell a kid in his family, if you come to DeMava, you're going to play against better competition, and we can coach you and work with you year round. That's what's required to be a great player. That's what it's like when you get to college. And those are the two selling points that makes it really hard for a kid or his family to turn down an opportunity to go to those schools.

Yeah, understood. And that's really what it comes down to. So it's unfortunately kind of like we're talking about the different rules in the NBA from different generations. our buddy Chris is just being handcuffed by some rules. They're out of his control. But anybody... Not much he can do. But people who know basketball, when they watch him coach,

they know he knows what he's doing. He's done a phenomenal job for years at a place, quite honestly, that was always known for its academic team, not its basketball team, for many, many years. And he's turned it into, you know, a county basketball power. I mean, he could potentially be headed towards, you know, College Park and Xfinity Center for what would be a fourth time. during his tenure. There's some good coaches in the county, and I don't mean to say that, you know, Dan

Harwood obviously does an incredible job, but I've always enjoyed watching Chris coach him up over at Whitman. Chris is as good as it gets. All right, so before I let you run, and I had a couple of other NBA things, but I'll pass on those. The Redskins organization is dysfunctional as any in the NFL, and I know you don't follow it in granular day-to-day detail. But you know a little bit about him, and you know a little bit about Dan Snyder. And the question for Redskin fans is, how does it ever get fixed as long as he owns the team? And I don't know that it does. And I'm an optimist at heart.

I'm a positive guy. I don't believe in making excuses. But in all reality, from what I've seen over the past decade, I don't know that it's fixable under that. And that just shows you how important leadership is and how important the head of the snake is to everything else. Because, you know, I don't believe that he has created the type of culture that will attract and maintain what's required to win a Super Bowl. And that's the hardest part. And, you know, I think he's built an invaluable franchise. I mean, as a Redskins fan, I kind of wish he'd build a team, make his money, and let someone else come in so they're kind of.

could be a fresh start. But it's really, it's really difficult to empower everyone else in the organization to do the job that they're capable of doing when someone like that is at the helm. And I don't know Dan Snyder. I've never met him. I don't, I don't mean to sound so judgmental of someone that I've never met. I'm obviously going off of hearsay and some other things, but in my, in my time working with elite level organizations and players and coaches, I just know how important it is to have that top piece to be someone that is supportive that has that's able to create the type of culture that can nurture what's required to win. And I don't know that he's proven he's capable of that.

Can people who are lacking in self-awareness and also simultaneously arrogant, arrogant. Can they change? Can they change? Because that's ultimately, you know, your only hope. He's, he's in his early to mid-50s. He's going to own the team for probably another 30 years. I don't think any, but at the very least, someone that would be doing some sort of diagnostic on him would say he lacks in self-awareness. And can people like that change? Yes, they can change, but if they lack the self-awareness, they won't change because they don't view it the way that you and I are viewing it. There's going to be a hint of narcissism and arrogance where they don't believe that they need to change, so therefore they won't. Because one thing I've learned, you can absolutely change yourself, and I'm living proof.

I'm a different man now than I was 10 years ago, having gone through a divorce, having gone through therapy, having all of these experiences, I have made. some monumental shifts in my own life. But I've also learned that you cannot change anyone else. It has to come from them. So unless he's open and willing to making those changes, it will never happen. And once again, just going on previous performance, it doesn't appear that he's open to that and doesn't appear that he believes he is the issue. Because again, you're talking about someone, if they can afford to buy an NFL team, then they've experienced success in other areas of life. And as I know, success is often compartmentalized that just because you were able to accumulate a tremendous amount of wealth doesn't mean that you're able to run an NFL organization

with that same success. So that's really where I think the problem lies is he probably lacks the self-awareness to realize that at present he is the thorn and the paw that's preventing the organization from being successful. And until he comes to that admission and is willing to do the internal work required to change, he won't change and the organization won't change. And that's just the shame for everyone that loves and supports and is a part of the Redskins. All right. The book is called Raise Your Game. Jay Billis wrote the forward.

Kevin Durant's got a quote on the cover. And I would urge, especially parents out there that have kids who are athletes, this is phenomenal for them. It's also phenomenal for anybody that wants to better themselves. overall physically and otherwise. And I mean, you and I got to spend more time because I got to lose some weight. I've been off playing hoops now for six months. I've got to get back into shape so I can get out there because I don't enjoy a treadmill. It's boring for me. I need something I need something that's fun. So I will call you soon. Tell everybody, by the way, just how easily

and quickly they can get the book. If they go to raiseyourgamebook.com, you can buy it there. There's links to all major retailers, and there's some additional stuff on there that I think people will find of interest. But you can also just go on to Amazon, which is what most people do, and just search for Raise Your Game by Alenstein Jr. And get it as well. And, yeah, man, I appreciate your support tremendously. I love what you're doing and always appreciate an opportunity to chop it up with you. This is great. I really enjoyed this, too.

Maybe I'll see you tonight at WJ. I sure hope so. Thanks, Kevin. Thanks, Alan, so much. I enjoyed that. I did. If you did, hopefully, great. If you didn't, no worries. But Alan was great, and I just think he's smart and he has really been connected over the years. And that was a great conversation and I really enjoyed that. So thanks to him for giving us so much of his time today. Tomorrow, Tommy's in. And then

Friday, I will have my Redskins Free Agency predictions. Because I think by the time, we get to the end of the weekend, Aaron, and certainly on Monday, we're going to hear a lot of rumors and, you know, reports of certain players going to different places before the official league calendar begins on the 13th, because on the 11th, you can begin negotiating and talking. So I think we're going to start hearing that stuff on Monday morning. So on Friday, I will do a free agency, a Redskins free agency prediction. But Tommy's in tomorrow. Enjoy the day.