The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Ranking the Last 10 NBA No. 1 Picks, a Wemby Check-in With Sean Elliott, Plus the Future of Scouting Basketball With Mark Silver

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Russillo starts the show by revealing his takeaways from Denver-Miami before Ceruti comes on to rank the last ten NBA no. 1 overall picks (0:47). Then he’s joined by former Spur and Spurs TV analyst Sean Elliott to learn more about Victor Wembanyama’s mentality and NBA potential, as well as share some Tim Duncan stories (23:36). Next, Russillo is joined by Sportradar and Synergy Sports’ Mark Silver to learn more about player tracking and how this data can enhance scouting (56:23) Plus, Life Advice with Ceruti and Kyle (82:28)! Is it okay to wear a double-breasted suit to a job interview? Check us out on Youtube for exclusive clips, live streams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out theringer.com/RG to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Sean Elliott and Mark Silver Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We get a lot of hoops for you. I'm going to recap just a minor, not even official tales of the couch. Denver's nice win in Miami. Miami did a great job. I thought we've got something that Sarudy came up with. Redraft from the top 10 picks based on some controversy internally here. We've got Sean Elliott on the Wembee rookie season. Who is this cat? Some stories about him, how it relates to Duncan coming in as a rookie when Sean and David Robinson were there.

And we've got Mark Silver from Synergy Sports Radar. The most valuable thing I have other than a television to help me watch basketball better and life advice and another same game parlay. Not a traditional open here, just a couple thoughts from last night and then Saruti has something that we want to go over. I actually really like this exercise. It is born from, I think frustration with something a co-worker said but we're not going to like beat up on a dude that we like. So let's just start with this. Denver wins Miami last night. They're technically the one seed now in the West. I know it feels a little every couple weeks taking another snapshot of it,

but Denver's just been on fire. They're NBA best 10-1 since the All-Star break. They had that win against Boston that we spent a lot of time on that I thought. I probably should have said insurmountable when we were doing the one word association thing that Bill and I did on Sunday that I didn't know about ahead of time. And whenever you're in that spot, you're kind of like, I think I should say, because insurmountable feels like it's impossible. And I just don't feel like that things in sports are necessarily impossible. I mean, certainly there's a list of things, but in playoff games and all that kind of stuff, like, while you're around, you're like, I don't know. I mean, that could like, I don't know.

I mean, that could happen. I'm not going to be shocked because we're surprised so often, but I guess the gap between Boston's best options and Denver's best options offensively to close the game, that part of basketball feels. Insurmountable with that one. So anyway, Denver, uh, number two offense and see all star break number seven defense, I thought their defense in the first quarter last time against Miami was stifling. Miami had been pretty hot right after the break,

now going through a downturn there. They're 15th on offense, 11th on defense since the break. I thought bam out of Ios defense on Jokic last night was the single best defensive effort against Jokic that I've seen from an NBA player the entire season. There may be another one that I'm missing. I haven't watched every one of the 60 plus Denver Nuggets games in its entirety. I watch a lot of them because I like watching Jokic so much.

But as far as being tasked with try to limit what Jokic is doing while also not getting burned by double teaming him, just all time stuff from BAM. I know he's not going to give you the offensive stuff to carry a team in a big playoff game. I'm not saying that's impossible, but like you're not, even though you're running a lot of your offense to Bam and his catches and his great passing and some of that stuff, he's never going to be like, hey, is this guy a top five player? I mean, that's just not who he's going to be, but every team should want a Bam out of bio.

I was so impressed with him. Let's look at the numbers really quickly here too for Jokic, low field goal attempt night for him. He had six field goal attempts in the first quarter. He had zero in the second quarter. He had one in the third quarter, and he took one shot in the fourth quarter. And Denver still won by double digits. Miami did a fantastic job. And here's the thing,

it wasn't like Denver lit it up and scored digits. Miami did a fantastic job. And, and here's the thing. It wasn't like Denver lit it up and scored 120. You know, Denver got bogged down. Miami mucked this game up. They found a way to stay in it almost the entire game after what looked like it could be an ugly first quarter. And then what happens late, hard versus easy.

I talk about it all the time. I don't care what the score is. Is this team having a really hard time getting good looks versus this other team? It feels like they can get into their stuff really easily. And for Miami with no hero, which is important, no Kevin Love last night. But as far as heroes creation. I think hero can be a little overlooked in comparison with some of the other young guys and you know when he says hey i'm not mentioned with luca and tray like okay we really need to keep going with that one specifically luca but. Hero when i watch this year like there's just a lot of stuff to him getting shot. And it's weird because of last year where they make that incredible playoff run and

make it to the NBA finals and he's hurt. Then part of the conversation becomes, wait, is Miami actually a little bit better without him because of his defense? And Caleb Martin was another level offensively gave. Vincent had great games. We know what Jimmy Butler did throughout the playoff run there, although it did turn down a bit there towards the end. Hero shot creation for this team is a necessity.

Terry Rozier was supposed to be some of that. I can't imagine he's going to continue to shoot at this bad for Miami, but the shooting numbers have been bad since he's come over from Charlotte, 42% from the floor overall, 29% from three. But he had a couple of moments last night where it's like, okay, everything's breaking down, find us something. Miami moves the ball, they have a lot of really good capable passers. Jorges initiating the offense is really cool.

But then late last night, I was like, do you wanna keep running this Jorges point initiation stuff here? Because where's Jimmy Butler? Butler had a bad game, didn't shoot a lot of free throws. Looking at the new thoughts on how the game is being officiated, Butler's last three games,

he's last four games average in three and a half free throws per game. He's at eight free throw attempts per game on the season. So I don't know. I always felt like Butler was just better at getting you up in the air on his third move and not looking for the shot. You just have to stay grounded against Butler.

And if you're going to up fake and get somebody to land on you, that's not the foul stuff that I've been talking about. I thought Pacers OKC was a game where it was very evident. I'm like, man, they're not calling some of this stuff that they used to call. But SGA still ends up with 30 points. 30 points for SGA. I don't know how you feel about that late foul in that game. So as we close out just Denver, Miami last night,

you know, Jokic not taking any shots, which I think he'd prefer to do, but then not getting torched all night on doubling him because they were doing a lot of different stuff with the way they double team him. They double him on the catch, they double him on the dribble, they double him on the first move. There was a play that just spoke to

the simplicity of Yokochi's brilliance. They figured out something by keeping Reggie Jackson in. It wasn't like this was so advanced. They just were running a high pick and roll of Reggie Jackson, which is being able to walk right up into his jump shot, hit two twos and then a three. And then it was like, okay, that was kind of the game. It was also interesting. They brought Jamal Murray back so late, um, in this game last night. But there was another play where there was initially a screen to the right by another player and then Jokic came over to set another screen, but he rolled

the catch to the left and he rolled the catch to the left off of the Reggie Jackson screen where he ended up with the basketball because he knew at that point Caleb Martin would have to come up to help based on what Miami was doing and as much help as they were sending. So Jokic instead of catching it near the paint where it's probably easier for him to operate his offense, he did something really simple. He sets the screen to one side but made sure he caught it further away from the paint on the left side. Caleb Martin comes up, Aaron Gordon back cuts baseline.

Yokech easy pass to Gordon. Gordon ends up with free throws. It was the simplest thing, but as it happened, I'm like, wait, how did Gordon get so open on that cut? And you can see Yokech just realize if I catch out here, Martin has to come up. If I catch in the paint, the help is more contained. It's more condensed. And then there's no real angle here for Gordon if Caleb Martin doesn't have to come off of him. So another impressive win by Denver in a game

that was very Miami-ish. Before we get to the guests then, I wanted to transition into something that Saruti brought to my attention. Magic fans unite, very upset. Our man, Woz, who we meant to have on, and he was traveling. We'll get him on. Right. and I wanted to transition into something Saruti brought to my attention. Magic fans unite, very upset. Our man was who we meant to have on and he was traveling.

So right, this wasn't like, hey, let's shit on the guy and not ask him about his opinion or have him on. We gave out the, we extended the olive branch is what we should have said. So what was it? What did it call the magic people really upset about? Something he said. Yeah, so I texted What did it call magic people really upset about something he said? Yeah, so I texted you and Bill, I think last Sunday or something before the pod. And it was

because, and again, yeah, I asked Waz to come on. He's traveling today. He's going to be out with Bill actually later tonight. We'll get him on in the future. This isn't the thing where it's like, hey, let's talk about Waz on his back. But he said on the Ringer NBA show on Group Chat, they were talking a bit, they were, I think it was their top five future rankings for teams, and he was just kind of poo-pooing on the Magic in general, and specifically, there was a line about Paulo not being, like, oh, sometimes you get the first pick and it's Wemby, and then sometimes you get it and it's Paulo,

implying that, like, Paulo wasn't something to be desired to have as a number one pick. And Magic fans everywhere picked that up. It was all over magic Reddit, Twitter, every other place being like, this is ridiculous. Like you're saying Paulo's not that dude. Um, and I think I do think was if that's, if that's what he meant is wrong, we'll get them on again to ask about this, but it got me thinking that's kind of a fun exercise to be like, all right, like where would Paulo when B and the rest of the number one picks

in the NBA rank over the list of the rank over the last 10 years, you know? So I basically was just like, let's just rank them. Like where would Paulo go in that? And that's what we're going to do right now. Was may have meant like sometimes you get the number one pick and it's one of the generational guys. Like when I was thinking about LeBron and the Sean Elliott interview that we're going to do later on, I was like, it's kinda Duncan LeBron and like one Minyama

based on expectation. Not to say that there are other people that were certainly hyped up. Anthony Davis was up there and Zion's gonna be in this list that we do right now. Maybe that's what he meant, but to have Paulo be the one where it's like, and then sometimes you end up with this guy,

you're like, dude, no, no way. So maybe we disagree with him. Maybe it was just for, look, all I'm telling you is somebody who speaks for a living and then I'll see how something I said kind of gets like repurposed. You go, wait, yeah, but that's not exactly like the overall meaning of what I did.

I mean, sometimes I think these breakout videos in general, like stuff that gets cut up. I'm like, did we do this shit before? Did we read two sentences of a book and go, oh my God. Like, I guess we kind of did sometimes with book excerpts to get it in the consciousness of people. But anyway, all right, moving on. Enough media, Rosillo, revisitation here.

All right, why don't I do this? Let me just give, I'll go in order the last 10 years of number one NBA picks, right? So people have an idea of what we're referencing post Anthony Bennett on, right? This is post Anthony Bennett. Yeah. So starting in 20, we started in 2014. So it goes Andrew Wiggins, Kat, Ben Simmons, Marco Foltz, Deandre,

and Zion Williamson and Edwards, Cade, Paulo and women. Yeah. So we're going to rank those 10 guys. And like, obviously like some of those guys are newer than others and we don't have the full picture, but I think this is sort of a how, what they've done in the league so far, but also like what we are realistically projecting them to be and how happy their team is that they have, you know, them on the roster, obviously.

Well, Victor's number one, because the chance of perhaps getting one of these generational guys. Number two is Ant. I don't know how anybody would debate one or two on that one. And you're right, this is, yeah, but you're right though. This isn't the easiest thing, because there's a combination of what you're still holding out hope for

and then who they've been to this point. I would put Palo third. I'd put him over Zion and Cade. I agree. Just because the Zion injury part of it. I'd hear, like Cade's been like, look out Pistons. I told you that team was sneaky talented. How about Duran the other night?

20? Well there's, I mean, you know. So we're in agreement. If Victor, Aunt Paolo, I want Cade Zion. I want Zion Cade. I still think, you know, I was looking at Bill's trade value rankings, which aren't everything. And I agree with him. He has Zion at 28 and Kade at 42. I think there

are people that would say we have Kade too high. I'm not selling any of my Kade stock. I'm still, I mean, I think since the All-Star break, he's been unreal since they kind of traded away some of the guys. I think that Monty Williams refused to not play and actually started playing some of the guys that people are like, Hey, why is, you know, why is Jayden Ivy not getting a ton of minutes? Like I think Kate's game has been better and they've won some more games. I mean, obviously there was only way, the only way to go for them was up, but I am selling zero of my case stock. But I would still have, I just think Zion, cause I think Zion could, if everything was right. And again, chances are it's probably not going to happen for him. I think he could be, he's probably

two behind Wemby, right? Probably two. Yeah. This is where it's like it's it's hard though because we're comparing players with with different criteria you know when Mignano knew too much about the Dow and with Zion it's like okay but what about all the other times where it didn't work out but am I still holding out the same hope for him other look I'm sure there's people that are pissed that cat hasn't been mentioned yet, or that we'd have Cade or Zion ahead of Cat,

but look, Timberwolves fans, we gave you one other thing to get super pissed off about, so just be thrilled. Well, this is where I think this is fascinating. I'm not a Cat guy, I'm not a Cat guy, but they still need him, they still need him, and I don't know, if you offered Cat for Cade, who would say no?

Well, that's the point is that I think Kade, I'm still of the belief that he can be like the primary option on a playoff team, on a good team, you know, maybe a middle of the road team. I just think the Pistons are a mess and I'm not blaming that on Kade. I don't think cat can be that. I'm not gonna keep apologizing for liking Kade.

So I think we've seen enough of cat though, where it's like, he, you know, he's said he's the best shooting big of all time. Maybe he is. I just think ultimately he's like one of know he said he's the best shooting big of all time maybe he is I just think ultimately he's like one of the top guys and not the top guy and we've seen that with Ann Edwards and I still think Kate can be the top guy so if you're asking me like who I feel better about building a franchise around even at even at the same point or ages in their careers I would just take Kate we could disagree on that but I would take Kate. All right you have Wiggins I would just take Kate. We could disagree on that, but I would take Kate.

All right, do you have Wiggins seventh? I have Wiggins seventh. Yep, I think it's fair. All right, it might not be, because as much as Aiden has driven me crazy, because I think he's incredibly talented. By the way, he's on fire lately. He had a switch where he got stuck on quickly

in the Toronto game, and he stayed right in front of quickly, like locked him up 30 feet away from, like quickly couldn't get around. I was like, oh, that's the guy that we saw in college that we got so excited about being like, he's a big, who actually gets to stay on the floor to close games as we felt like the league was getting smaller and smaller,

might be getting bigger now again. But the Aitin Wiggins with like, that's just a lack of desire off if there ever was. I gotta be honest with you. I, I probably have eight and lower than the average person. I probably have them lower than you. His, his numbers are fine. He's 16 and 10 for his career, but like, I just can't get over the, like, I

think he's closer to the Ben Simmons thing than he is like Foltz and Wiggins. Like I just think from an attitude perspective, I mean, this is a guy who, again, when was asked what would be a, what success would be in his career, said like a second contract. He also said that like he has nothing to prove

because he's already a max player. Well, guess what? The team immediately regretted giving you the max contract and they immediately tried to trade you and you kind of, you know, I know it wasn't quite all his fault because there was a Monty Williams stuff in there, but basically just like powdered his way out of Phoenix.

So I'm just not an Aitin fan. Like I don't care what the numbers are. I just don't think that's a guy that you want on like a winning basketball team. Yeah. And I mean, when you're 25 saying, what else do I have to prove? That's not, that's not what I'm looking for.

If I was in HR, you know, the guy showing up and be like, yeah, dude, I already made 100K, suck it. Well, just juxtapose that with Yanis, and I know not everybody has Yanis' mentality, but I think somebody asked him, like, hey, what do you, do you think you're in the MVP discussion this year? And he said, like, I think I'm like the worst player in the NBA this year. That's what I want to hear from, from, from a guy like that who's, who's

having an incredible year, but still that might have been a bit dramatic. Okay. So I have, we've got Kat Wigan six, seven, I have eight in full. Hold on, hold on one thing on Wiggins really quickly. That 2022 season is a, is a pretty big outlier though, right? I mean, he was an all-star. I don't want to say he was. He shouldn't have been an all-star starter. The voting thing for that was weird. I think I voted Go Bear, by the way,

Minnesota, uh, because you had to do the back court front court thing. So I'm pretty sure I voted Go Bear. And then I was like, wait, Wiggins is going to be a starter. And then there was some weird like campaign in China or something that they helped think prop up to vote a little bit. And he was really good in 22, you know? So if you're going to say, hey, he's a ring, he was part of a championship team or whatever,

for the most part, it's all been super disappointing. Yeah, because that year, I don't want to say he was Joe Flacco, but there's some Joe Flacco-ish to that season where it was like, whoa, like we thought he was okay. And then he has this incredible outlier season. And then we're asking, oh, was this the guy, did Golden State just unlock this guy for the foreseeable future?

It could be easier with the other guys rolling. So- And he's kind of just gone back to being, you know. Yeah. All right. It's disappointing again. But he said- At least Aitin's 25.

And maybe I just put way too much in how, like I thought when Aitin went to Portland, the numbers that he's putting up now is what he was gonna do all season and then we were gonna start having like, oh, is Aitin really good again stuff? And it's like, no, he's comfortable not ever having to be uncomfortable.

Like he doesn't want conflict. He doesn't want pressure. He didn't wanna deal with any, I didn't even know that he wants to play in all the games, but whatever he's been doing the last couple of weeks, specifically since he missed some time earlier this March, he's been on a tear and he's playing really well. So when he's 25, I'm like, I'm still taking that,

you know, look, I would maybe move it up ahead of Wiggins here, but I'm still taking it ahead of Foltz or Simmons. You have A and last? I have Foltz eight, because at least I think least I think with faults he just gets the knock of It was so bad at the start and the shot thing and the injuries and stuff He's been a valuable player for the magic and he's gonna be a free agent this offseason. I think he's gonna be a valuable player I'm not saying he's gonna be a star

He's maybe even a borderline starter, but like, you know, San Antonio could use him right now and it could be awesome for Wemby I think he's just like a good solid player that you can depend on. Whereas I just think Simmons and Aitin just aren't that. So I have Foltz actually eight. And then who do you have nine? I have Simmons nine and I have eight and 10. You have eight and 10. Wow.

At least, at least Simmons he's three time all star. He had a couple of third team, all MBAs, two team, two time all defensive player. The highs of Ben Simmons were higher than the highs of eight and I just Aitens got you as he's 16 and 10 in his career And I just think he's just gonna be he's gonna be like the Hassan Whiteside thing We're like it's gonna look okay for some times and like that the stats might wow you he's gonna trick a lot of people into thinking He's good, and then he's just gonna disappoint you every time. I would give Aitin another max before I would sign Hassan Whiteside, okay?

I don't do not hit you with the efficiency stuff. The issue I have with Simmons, I mean it's minor, he never fucking plays anymore, Saruti. That's fair, but I'd rather have Simmons not playing, I think, than Aitin. All right. I'm just not interested. That's awesome, that's a sizzler of a take,

but that's just not and look I can't wait You just let me know I got the alerts ready to go when I get the July update on lookout for 24 25 Ben Simmons I wish Fandool would put a prop on which NBA reporter will write that Dogshit piece again this summer. Yeah the three will not name names because I'm actually friends with some of them But don't do it if you are my friend, don't be tripped. Don't don't write the piece, but one of you is going to. All right. Uh, one real quick note though here too. It is kind of interesting that the, the last five picks, the last five number one overall picks have been all pretty

great. I mean, Wemby, Aunt Paula, Zion and Cade, if you like historically, if you just take like a five number one pick sample size, it's gonna be worse than those five guys. So I don't know if it's like recency bias or maybe, I don't know, I can't see any of those guys like taking a huge nosedive and being a super disappointment. So it's the last five years has actually been pretty impressive on the hit rate.

Yeah, because if you look at it historically here, again, I was looking at it this morning. Yeah, I don't know. That's, it's overall, it's been pretty good. I mean, the Bennett thing's an outliner, but there's AD, there's Kyrie, Wal was actually really good before he got hurt. I'm not saying he was as good as,

but there's usually like a total bust within the five. There's usually a total bust within a group of five. I don't think any of these guys are total bus. Like you'll have a Barney or a Bennett or a, you know, a Kwame Brown. And yeah, but it's not, it's not, it's not been the case though. It's like Barney and then Bennett. You know, and Odin to me is not a bus because he was hurt because if you played, he was going to be a stud.

OK, that's recapping that's redrafting the draft. It's that. Next week was open invite. Bet the NBA with no sweat. Same game parlay from FanDuel every Thursday with TNT Thursdays. It doesn't matter if you're new to FanDuel or already have an account. You'll get bonus bets back if your

same game parlay doesn't win any NBA on TNT game. NBA same game parlays are the perfect way to combine your bets for a chance to score a bigger payday. All right, the Alliance won this past week. Huge win for the gang. So we're going solo on this one. As of right now, Portland is at home against New York. Portland looking at the schedule quickly here, obviously coming off of the back to back. They won last night against Atlanta. You could say it's three and four nights where New York is just getting on the road

for the first leg of their West Coast trip. That's with a day off. But Portland is plus 10. The health as of giving this out, OG is back. He's played one game. He's good to go. Obviously, Randall, Mitchell's still out. Jeremy Grant day to day with this one. Sharp is still out, but it's Portland plus 10. I feel like I've been watching him the last couple weeks because I always watch him. They've been just a tick more competitive. Aitin is 28 and 17 in his last three. He missed about the first week of March.

So this is what we're going with. We're going with Portland plus 10. We're going with eight and over 20 points and we're going with DiVincenzo three or more made threes. The DiVincenzo three point numbers are absurd. How many he puts up, I think defensively Portland, you figure he's gonna get a few of these up where it was two or more makes. It was like minus 1200 and then if you just throw up more three with DiVincenzo you get much better payouts. So those three bets it's plus 341. That is the play. Eight and 20 or more. DiVincenzo three or more th. And the Trailblazers plus 10. However you want to play, just head to FanDuel.com slash Ryan. RYE to bet the NBA with a no-sweats, same-game parlay with TNT Thursdays.

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apply C terms at sportsbook.fandle.com. If you're a league pass guy, then you've probably heard Sean Elliott a little bit more this season. I know that I've been locked in as part of the broadcast coverage of the San Antonio Spurs and a Spurs legend. He joins us now we're going to talk some San Antonio basketball. What's up man? Good to see it. Good to see you. Thanks for having me. Okay, so what is it like learning about Wimbenyama? You know, the anticipation seeing it now it's played out. He's played in 58 games near there for all of them. What's it been like this season watching

somebody like this a somebody like this, a prospect like this, who is unlike anything we've ever seen before? It's amazing. It's been refreshing, it's been uplifting. I think it's reinvigorated so many people around the city, the franchise. It's just so much fun to watch.

I mean, every night we're coming to the arena. I know the biggest stress that I have, Ryan, actually is just wondering if he's gonna play or not. I mean, when he was on a minutes restriction, I was like, is he gonna play tonight? How many minutes is he gonna get tonight? I mean, that's the biggest stress I got going to the arena every night

because it's just really enjoyable to watch him on the floor. And one of my biggest things, and I tell Spurs fans all the time, is I like to watch the growth of players from the beginning of the year to the end. That's what I really get off on. And it's been like that the last three or four years,

just to see how our young guys start to absorb what the coaching staff is telling them, how they get better game by game, sometimes quarter by quarter. And to watch him has really been a study in how a young man is coachable. He gets along great with his teammates and just how, what a sponge he is.

I mean, he just continues to get better and better. There's so many aspects of his game where he's just improved from the beginning of training camp. I saw his very first practice until now. And so it's just fun to see the growth and development, but it's scary at the same time because you sit there and you tell yourself, I mean, am I watching, you know, a kid who has a chance, a real chance to be the greatest of all time? Wow, I know, just saying it out loud after 15 games.

But I think that's what you, it's what you kind of have to allow yourself to do with him. I have some other questions obviously about the basketball part of it, but you've got to know him now, I imagine. What's he like? What's he like when it's just him and it's not all of us in the outside

assuming we know what he's like. Well, I got a chance to go to that dinner with him after the draft and the next night after the draft where I was there, David, Timmy, Manu, the coaches had his mom and dad off in another room so we could just sit there and interrogate him. But he's just completely different than the other teenagers that are coming up nowadays. He's just incredibly wise beyond his years. He's got the mind or the wisdom of somebody

who's 35 or 40 years old in a 20-year-old body. And that's really amazing. I think that's what we all love most about him. He's also a super unselfish kid. He's very respectful, knows the history of the game. He's the guy, like, when he saw David and Timmy, you should have seen, like, the reverence he had for them. That was really amazing to see, to see Manu

and the way he, you know, was just respectful toward them and understood the history of the Spurs and all that those guys had accomplished. And so he's not this guy who comes in expecting everything to be handed to him. He knows that he's got to work hard. He knows that it's going to be a tough task ahead of him, that it's not going to be easy, but he's ready to embrace that, he's ready to take it head on, and I think that's just one of the many things we love about him.

Is the Spurs thing, like I'm picturing you, David, Tim, Pop, Manu, I'm thinking almost like Yellowstone, where they initiate the guys when they show up. What is it about the Spurs thing that is actually different from organizations? You know, it wasn't like that when I first got here in 89. I'll be honest with you, I tell my friends stories

of old Spurs and new Spurs. Old Spurs at the time were just trying to hang on. I mean, obviously a really small market. They just didn't have the resources that a lot of other organizations had. So everything was kind of done on a shoestring type of budget. And it was just kind of a different mindset. But when Pop came back in 94, 95, as the general manager and RC Buford came back with them,

that's where the culture really changed. And that's where Pop really put an emphasis on kind of a family atmosphere, letting the players know that they're valued, but also giving the players responsibility and accountability to each other. And that was the biggest thing. So when I got back from Detroit in 94, 95, it was just a different atmosphere,

it was a different way of thinking about team building, about culture building, you wanted to bring in the right guys. Even if guys were talented, if they're troubled, or they weren't the type of guys you wanted to have in your locker room, or representing your organization in the community, those guys weren't here. Pop would not bring them in.

And so, I tell people we're really lucky because the culture was really established by David and Timmy. We had two selfless superstars that didn't read the Superstar Handbook. You know, they were coachable, number one. They were great teammates to everybody around them. to everybody around them. And when you see that, that trickles down, down the line. And then you had, of course, Pop, who was the leader of the group, who held everybody accountable, Ryan, everybody. Nobody on our team got superstar treatment.

If you stepped out of line off the court, or you didn't follow the game plan on the court, you were gonna hear about it. He was gonna let you know, was going to let you know. And he would let you know in a way that made you understand that it wasn't just about the game of basketball. It was really about, really about life and how to conduct yourself. And so I think that kind of culture has, it was established.

And now when guys come in, they, they understand what it's all about. When Tim comes in and I was looking at it, I mean you'd won 59 games in 95, 96 and then you have the injuries. Some would say you were given a little extra time off with that lottery pick. I know there's a lot of debate about that. I know you guys, go ahead, go ahead.

I can say, I mean, I was there that year. David Robinson broke his foot, what, early on in the season. First off, he wasn't there to start the season. Came back and then promptly broke his foot. He was out for the rest of the year. I had knee surgery late January. We had other guys that went down.

And so when you build your whole offense and your defense around the big fella and then he's not there, you kind of have to, you know, kind of scrap everything. Pop takes over. It's a different type of system for us. It's a different way of thinking about the game.

And so, you know, if we have David there the whole year, it's a whole different story. I mean, you're talking about a team that is winning 50 plus games again, and we're not in that lottery. We don't get Timmy Duncan. So it was just, it was just happenstance. It was just circumstances that just fell, you know, in our favor. But that's the important point here is that you won 59 games before the bad year that leaves the picks.

So then you're bringing in a Duncan to a team that normally would never ever get somebody like this because you were so good. I, I wonder, I mean, because I looked at it again, Duncan was fifth and MVP voting his rookie season. That doesn't happen. I mean, especially granted he was a seasoned guy, you know, playing so long at Wake. So that's the thing that doesn't happen anymore either if you're going to be the number one pick, but to be fifth and MVP voting. Okay. So was, was there ever like, did you totally get it with Tim right away? Or was there maybe a moment where you pop and David went like, Hey, whatever we thought we had planned for him,

like we actually don't have to do any of those things because one, he's so mature and he was so ready to contribute immediately. Was there ever a change of course or did you already know exactly what you were getting? No, I think it was pretty evident the first couple of days of practice, what we were getting. I mean, I'll be honest, like NBA guys at that point, that time, you know, I didn't watch a lot of college games. I mean, I'll be honest, like, NBA guys at that point, that time, you know, I didn't watch a lot of college games. You know, it wasn't like it is nowadays where

you can turn on the channel and you can catch almost any college game you want. You know, back in the day, you'd catch Timmy once or twice a year on TV, maybe if you had the time. And so we knew he, I knew he was a great player. We all heard the hype, but we just didn't really understand until we saw him the first couple of days of practice. And you could see his talent, the skill, the fundamentals, the mindset, and you could really get a feel for what type of person he was. But I can say this, my first time that I interacted

with Timmy, he came over to my house and I had these big video games upstairs and I'd invite the neighborhood kids over. It was like Mortal Kombat 2. And I would sit there and play that game all the time, man, just to de-stress, you know? And I used to whoop up on the kids, like talk trash too, right?

Finish them, chopping their heads off and all the good stuff. And Timmy came over and he came up the stairs. I said, hey man, you want to play some games? He's like, yeah, yeah. And he looks around and goes, what's this? Well, this is cool. I mean, I've never, and he starts kicking my butt,

like right off the bat. And so for me, I was thinking to myself, this is the type of guy, there are these guys that you come across every once in a while, that you show them something that you've been doing well. And they do it better than you in just a short period of time. And he his competitiveness and his nature and the way he was a killer, really came through that day.

And then I understood that like, we got a competitor like this kid. He's serious. As I've watched him, Wim Benyama, and Tim's one of my all time favorite players, and you've already touched on that. Like, I just never quite understood, like why do you wanna be a pain in the ass? Like if you're the best player in the team,

and granted, like you can be mad at your coach, you can be mad at the roster, you can be mad at all these different things. But, you know, when I look at Steph, or I look at a roster, you can be mad at all these different things. But when I look at Steph or I look at Duncan, there's something there where there's a selflessness despite the fact that they know they're the best player because I think a lot of the drama just kind of is an energy sucker for teams sometimes.

Not to say that there aren't some players that are totally justified for being upset about their situation, but it's becoming, it just feels more and more rare for the face of the franchise to be somebody that just understands the team part of it. Maybe I sound old with all of this, but I think you probably agree. By all accounts, man, it feels like every time I, whether I watch Wemba Nyama respond to adversity in a game, which there's certainly been a lot of, when I see him in interviews,

all the interactions, it feels very real that, you know, who knows what's gonna happen and who knows how good the team's gonna be in the next couple of years, but being tasked with this, it's just not for everybody. And it feels like at least early returns are, especially in some of the great moments this year where I'm like, I think this is the guy. Like, I think this is somebody that is the perfect

like personality to continue kind of the Spurs tradition, by the way. Yeah, I don't think there's any question. He handles the pressure, all the hype. He just takes it all in stride. He just doesn't get caught up and consumed with all of it. And I think he's, like I said earlier, he's just wise beyond his years.

He's able to block out the noise, block out the criticism. He's got the big picture in mind. And he's got big goals that he's going after and that he's trying to accomplish. So he doesn't let really anything get to him. And he's been that way, according to everything that we've heard from his playing days in Europe where teams would try to beat up on him.

Grown men are going after him. And he just handles it so well. He rarely, rarely if ever complains on the court about not getting fouled. You haven't seen him have these interactions with the refs where he's going at him. We had a game last week or so where Indiana just, they pounded on him. They beat him up and he still ends up with 31, 13, six blocks, six assists. He just continues to play. He's just kind of above everything.

You look at guys, we go to all these arenas and we watch players warm up. Steph Curry's warm up is the craziest thing you're ever going to see. I mean, he has so many people there before the game just to watch him warm up on the road and at home. Victor's getting that same way. I mean, he comes out of the tunnel, wherever we are, he's got crowds waiting for him just to watch him out there to go through his warmup routine. And he handles it just better than anybody his age could possibly do. I mean, I can't imagine if I was that age and I'm walking on the court and everybody's

out there watching me warm up at 20 years old and cheering me on. I think that'd be a little daunting and it'd be a little distracting, but he just, I mean, he just navigates it so smoothly. This, this probably isn't the fairest question because I think we already know the answer to it is like, okay, but what about the team and moving forward? Is the ceiling of the roster enough? And it's like, well, no, like, you know, I like Devin. I think his shot creation is, is really, really special. Um, you know, I've liked Kelden in the past. I, you know, this hasn't been a great year for him. I really liked Sohan. I don't know that I, well, I'll just tell you, I didn't understand the Sohan point guard thing

at the beginning of the year. I know the arguments for it, but I also think from a basketball standpoint, like you played, if the guy who has the ball the entire time is maybe not in tune to all of the sharing part of it. But look, they're trying different things. They're trying different things. They're trying different things. all the entire time is maybe not in tune to all of the sharing part of it. But you know, look, they're trying different things.

I've heard all sorts of different theories and arguments on it, but they look, they moved off on it. So I don't want to sit here, this is your home broadcasting and be like, hey, is this team terrible around Victor? Because that's not what I'm gonna ask. And that's not really even what I believe because I do think there's some talent.

But what do you think is the best fit? Like the kinds of players, I know you can name specific players, but like what does he need to unlock everything that he's capable of as a basketball player? Well, I'm sure we're gonna continue to look at the young guys that we have right now, obviously. And you know, all the guys you're talking about, they're so young.

Jeremy Sohan's 20, Ben Vassell's 22, if I've got my numbers right. Obviously, Victor's 20. All our guys, our oldest guy on the team, I believe is Devonte Graham at 28 or 29 years old. So at that age, we have to always remember that these guys should be juniors or seniors in college at the most. So there's still a lot of potential. I used to grade guys on a curve of, hey, four years of college, and then that next year's

your rookie year. So for me, like a guy who plays one year in college and then comes out, hey, you got three years and then your fourth year to me is like what a true rookie should be. And so our guys, I think are ahead of the curve already. It's just that right now people are impatient. They want us to win right away instead of just going through the building process.

So when I look at players going forward, there know, there are guys on our team that are going to be pieces and they're going to be pieces that we're going to keep around Victor, obviously. And then I think, you know, you want to try to go out and find some established vets that can continue to show him the ropes. You talked about it earlier where Timmy comes into a team that had essentially won 59 games the year before and he had guys there that were established. He had guys that could show him the ropes, teach him the nuances of the game, how to prepare yourself, how to get rest, those kinds of things. And so Victor hasn't had that luxury. They're all young and they're all trying to learn together.

And so you kind of wouldn't mind having some old heads on the end of the bench there that could impart some wisdom. Same thing with David. I mean, we had Caldwell Jones and Mo Cheeks and Terry Cummings. All those guys could take David aside and say, hey, this is how this guy's gonna play tonight.

This is what he's gonna try to do to you. And they could teach you the nuances of the league and the game. So I think that's probably the biggest thing. And we're going to try to continue to develop guys. And I would say the last thing I would say, maybe try to find a few more shooters because he's obviously already facing double teams. Sometimes they're sending two extra players at him.

And so he's an unselfish guy. He sees the floor better than anybody. He gets the ball out. And if you have guys that make the defense pay, I think it benefits everybody. Okay, this isn't meant to be critical. This is simply, you know, as you started this, and I would agree, like we're watching him

and it feels like something we shouldn't do. We shouldn't be asking like, could this guy be the greatest of all time? It feels disrespectful to the people that are on that list, right? This isn't normally how we, so knowing that that is part of the conversation of like how special could he end up being. I'll have nights where I watch him get into his offense and it can be a struggle. It can be a struggle basically just because of his physical. It's just hard to be that tall to then cross someone up and then get into your offense.

I think when you look at the history of the players, granted, there was a big man in era there where everything was built around the center, it had a resurgence later on. But when I think of the great play, I think of the guys at your position, the wings, it's like, I need a bucket tie game, elimination game in a playoff series. It's game like, you've got to make that bucket. You've got to get that. Is he somebody that you think will be able to get into his own offense off the dribble and be somebody that's making those kinds of shots? Oh yeah. I don't think there's any question. I think he's done it already. He's done it already. And I think a lot of teams know that. I mean, his fourth quarters this year

have been really good. He's been incredible in the clutch, not afraid to take the big shots, not afraid to try to take a game over. We've seen that. And he's really done on both ends now, Ryan. And what you're saying is exactly correct. I tell everybody the reason we were so dominant for so long is because at the end of the game, we could throw it down to number 21 in the low block, and we were going to get something out of it. He was going to score. And so that's, and he was going to defend as well. So that's why we were so good for a long time. It's going to take a while for, I think, everybody on the court, especially young team to figure that out.

Our guys have been kind of programmed, I think not our guys, the entire league has been programmed to shoot three balls and just fire away instead of like we were. First thing I did when I caught the ball in the wing is I'm looking down the low block for David or Timmy. That's how we were programmed. And so it was always an inside out game to us. And when we're more like that, which will happen over the years where we're throwing it down him in the guts of the game in the last

three, four or five minutes when it's crunch time, he's going to be that guy. And he's well on his way, because again, it seems like pressure doesn't bother him. He doesn't succumb to it. He just continues to play through everything. Yeah, I'm not worried about the pressure with him at all. And some of the shots that he's made,

I guess I'm just always picturing like, are you running high pick and roll with him at seven but five with the claw on his hands, and then he's rejecting the screen and going back to the other side. Like I don't even know if that's physical. What I just want to see. It's possible.

Yeah, maybe it is. Maybe it is. Yeah, we've seen almost like these reverse pick and rolls with him sometimes with Trey Jones. We've seen a lot of that where Trey sets a screen and cuts to the basket. Victor comes off and feeds him going to the basket. I mean you want to talk about just flipping the game upside down. I mean your point guard setting a screen for your seven foot

four guy on the perimeter and he's coming off dropping it down to the point guard rolling to the rim. I think I'm gonna vote for him for Defensive Player of the Year. I don't care. I would say that's smart. Okay. Well, I have a vote and I don't care about the record. I don't like, you know, for defensive player of the year, maybe other people look at it differently. I think record is influenced too much of it. MVP is one thing, rookie of the year and that kind of stuff. Like I don't hear about like the seeding of these teams. Um,

I was watching the golden state game the other night and you had Chris Paul come off the high screen. He got in the middle and Chris Paul wasn't sure about what he wanted to do. I don't watch many games where Chris Paul's indecisive in what he wants. And he didn't know if he wanted to shoot or if he wanted to pass. And then you had clay come off the same kind of action where he's catching it, driving middle. And then he doesn't know.

And there's no stat there for Wim Benyama. I don't even know if they're technically contests because he still has to worry about Jackson Davis on the baseline. And then I'll watch teams and it actually happened in Golden Steve, even though Jackson Davis got him with that nice play there towards the end. But these teams will run this pocket pass stuff

and it's like, why are you doing it? Because now the big is just right into women Yama and the big doesn't want to do anything. I think the great thing about Jackson Davis's play was that after he had peeled off like five times on that catch, he said, he's rolling, he's getting the catch. He's like, why are you giving me the ball? Like I don't want to go at this guy. I don't want to do this.

That's the kind of stuff where I will argue at the end of the year, as much as I love so many other defensive players, you see NBA players give up, get confused when they're in that restricted area, in a way you do not see most nights with him. With anybody else in the league. Right.

With anybody else in the league. And I've said it before, his defensive presence alone, nights with him. With anybody else in the league. Right. With anybody else in the league. And I've said it before, his defensive presence alone, there's no one that brings that to the league right now. So what you're talking about, what you're describing, I see it on a nightly basis where guys penetrate or they get a little pocket pass, they're near the basket, they look, they see him, he's lurking, they pass it back out. He's a deterrent in the paint and he doesn't even get a challenge

Nearly as much as you think he would and he's still leading the league in blocks So you've had a lot of people that a lot of players that get in the paint area. They test them they get their shot blocked they get it deflected and now You get in there and you start thinking not only are you deterred? But then I mean as a player I know I'm going in there against you start thinking, not only are you deterred, but then, I mean, as a player I know, I'm going in there against Akeem Olajuwon, or Mark Eaton, you know, these, Dikemi Matambo, and you know that they're there

when you're going to the basket, and you start thinking, how am I gonna get this shot up? You gotta get clever. It's not a traditional layup. It's not an easy dump going in there. You've got, you start thinking, do I have to throw this thing up there? It's a, you know, guys don't practice these high floaters

and runners over the top of long arms. I mean, you practice those things, but then you're not practicing for this guy. And so you see him deter so many penetrations, so many people, players get in the paint and they think differently. And you're right, there is no stat for that. It's too late in the season now because it's hard to find,

but one of my favorite things early on was the first time a team had played against him. And there'd be those first quarter attempts where you could see, it was like, all right, let me see what this guy's all about. And when Mignama wouldn't even have to be in position. You know, when I watched him before the draft, there were plays where he might have gotten beaten, whether it was, you know, a read or he would go to help him on the wrong side, or maybe he would lose somebody behind him because he

was trying to give help on the ball. I've never seen a player then make up for whatever the first misstep was. or maybe he would lose somebody behind him because he was trying to give help on the ball. I've never seen a player then make up for whatever the first misstep was like him because of the length, the reach, and the athleticism, and all these different things. I've seen him block guys on the other side of the rim where it was just like,

I guess I'll just get you on this side because you're still not clear of me. And then you can see some of the attempts that happened in the first quarter don't happen later in the game. And again, I'm telling you, you've sat here for not clear of me. And then you can see some of the attempts that happened in the first quarter don't happen later in the game. And again, I'm telling you, you've sat there for every one of them. No, yeah, his range is absolutely unbelievable,

but I think what helps him more than anything is what he has in between his ears. I mean, he's a smart player, and he's only gonna get smarter and get a better feel for players that he plays against. I mean, he's only seen some guys once, some guys, he's seen them twice. But when you start to play against more of these NBA players and you get a better feel for him, he's going to be even a better defender.

And speaking of those type of blocks, I mean, I call them dad blocks or dad blocks where you just kind of, you're in the backyard with your kid and you just stuff it. It doesn't even leave the ground. And then he had a block in Washington this year where I believe it was Tyus Jones, they kind of beaten him and he just turned around, he wasn't even looking, turned around, swung his arm and blocked it off the glass.

And it was just a play that you just never seen a block like that in your life. You've never seen anybody block a shot like that. But like I said, a lot of that is his range, but a lot of that is just his mentality and how smart he is out there on the court. Couple of things I wanna do before we say goodbye. Is Pop happier now this year?

It feels like he's in a better mood most of the time. So I mean, even win or lose, he hates to lose, no question about it. But you know, pop is the type of guy who just enjoys coaching and seeing his guys absorb what he's telling them. And our guys have gotten so much better over the last month, two months or so. And so I think that right there is fueling him more than anything.

I know that something that's anybody who knows your history, um, knowing you survived a kidney transplant forced NBA player to come back and play with that. I think the most improved player award you came in 11th that year you must have been like hey what else do I need to do? What are we talking about? ACL? We've already done that. But this is heavy stuff, man. And I know it's something you're very passionate and you've been partnering up with Fresenius Kidney Care this month.

So why don't you share a little bit more about what you're doing? Yeah, every March I've teamed up with Fresenius Kidney Care to help spread the message about chronic kidney disease because it's a silent epidemic actually in this country. It's a health crisis. Right now you have one in seven American adults that have chronic kidney disease.

That's 35 million people. That's a staggering amount of people that have chronic kidney disease. The problem is, Ryan, is that nine out of 10 people that have it don't know they have it. That's exactly what happened to me. I got struck down at 25. So my kidney disease actually started a lot sooner than 25 years of age because the problem

with kidney disease is it doesn't present itself until it's advanced. And so a lot of people walking around, they feel just fine right now, but when you start to feel bad, your symptoms start to present themselves and your kidney disease is now in a more advanced stage. So we're trying to get the message out to high risk groups, the underserved communities, to understand that Fresenius Kidney Care is there to reach out to you. They're providing care to underserved communities. They're there with

Answers to your questions and for treatment options if you go to facineus kidney care dot-com you can find pretty much whatever you need, but this is important because I Mean if you get this if you catch the symptoms early, that's a game changer. It's an absolute game changer I was struck down after a playoff series. I felt like it was 92, 93. We lost to the Phoenix Suns. And I felt for the next two weeks, I thought I was depressed because we lost that series. I couldn't get out of bed. I lost my appetite, extremely lethargic. What finally prompted me to go to the doctors, I woke up one day and I had been waking up and my hands and my feet were really swollen. But I woke up one morning and had trouble opening my eyes because my face was so swollen.

I just had all this water on my body. And at that point I said, okay, maybe I'm not depressed here, something's wrong. I went to the doctor, took a lot of blood tests and that's where they said, okay, maybe I'm not depressed here. Something's wrong. I went to the doctor, took a lot of blood tests and that's where they said, hey, we're gonna, we gotta run a little bit, few more tests on you. Looks like something's going on with your kidneys. So I was in a, I was blindsided basically, a 25 years old being a professional athlete. And I know if that can happen to me,

it can happen to anybody out there. And so we're trying to get the word out for people to get tested. If you have high blood pressure, diabetes, you're in an underserved community, healthcare wise, you should talk to your doctor and get tested for kidney disease. Because like I said, it's a silent killer,

it's a silent epidemic that no one really understands and the spotlight hasn't been on this disease. And so we're just, you know, we're trying to help as many people as we can, Ryan. And I don't really want to go on too much, but I can tell you this. When I was 11 years old at my very first sports camp, they gave you physicals, you know, that was my very first sports camp, they gave you physicals.

That was my very first physical I had. I had high blood pressure at 11 years old. And that high blood pressure is prevalent in the United States right now, especially with people that are sedentary, have bad diets, don't do a great job of taking care of themselves, but some of it is there for people that actually do do a good job of taking care of themselves, but some of it is there for people that actually do do a good job of taking care of themselves. So for me, that was untreated for a

lot of years. People used to think I had what was called white coat syndrome. You walk into the doctor's office, you see the doctor, you get nervous, your blood pressure elevates or spikes. That was not the case. I had early symptoms of kidney disease from a very, very early age. It went untreated for a long time. And so it's just incredibly important to get the word out so people understand that chronic kidney disease is out there and it's out there in mass. You can also get more information at Fresenius Kidney Care, where the story, that's an incredible

story now. I didn't realize that 11 years old, high blood pressure and you're just like, all right, whatever. It just gets nervous. Yeah, yeah. That's awful. I mean, I played with that for years. I was fortunate.

I got a transplant. My brother Noel gave me a kidney 25 years ago. So I'm doing extremely well, but not everybody has that option. And you don't want to find yourself like me. You want to get on it right now. You want to jump on it early. You want to find out if you have any kind of indications of kidney disease right now. You catch it early. There are a whole host of treatments. We're living in the golden age of medicine right now. There's so many treatment options now compared to what it was like 25, 30 years ago that

this is a situation where you can kind of halt the progression of kidney disease. So again, Freseniusaskidneycare.com. Go there and get the answers that you need. Thanks a lot, John. This was a lot of fun. And obviously there at the end too. I mean, I knew your story, but I didn't know it to that extent.

So thanks for sharing that. My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me. Synergy is a program I've used for a long time. It's probably the most important thing that I use as a resource in my basketball watching history. I've had it for I think two decades. I'll get into that a little bit, but more importantly, one of the people that is involved

with this thing that I absolutely love using, Mark Silver is with us. He's the executive vice president of product sports performance at sports radar and overseas synergy sports as well. So what's up, man? It's good to see it. Thanks for connecting. Good to see you. Thanks for having me excited to be here today. So I don't know when or who I ran into from synergy when it first happened, but I've always loved the draft and when I got

to Boston in 03, I would just still, we would do special draft shows or whatever, or I would go to the Celtics facility and waltz them and do them. And, you know, I used to beg schools for DVDs of players. And some schools would send me just like, N1 mixtapes on DVDs. One school asked me to send the DVDs back, which I didn't. I couldn't believe it. I was like, wait, you want the DVDs, one school asked me to send the DVDs back, which I didn't. I couldn't believe it.

I was like, wait, you want the DVDs back? And then I was at Portsmouth and I met somebody who was working with you from Synergy. It was basically like, look, with this program, we're gonna give you access to it and you're gonna be able to watch any player from any level where there's video and then you can sort it through all these

different mechanisms to find exactly what you're looking for. And I don't know that I truly understood how valuable it was until here I am 20 years later and if my account ever gets locked out before the draft, I completely freak out because I have all of this work that I have to do. So let's talk about this because this has been going on for a while and it's not just basketball. You've branched out a lot of different areas, but you've been with this for a while and overseen some of the acquisition parts of this.

So the history of what this product is for those of us that know or don't know. Yeah. So you actually came on board right as the business was getting started. We were founded in 2003. So we've been around for 20 years. I've been with the business for 15 of those years. And really what we were focused on is solving the problem you described that you had yourselves,

but we were doing it for teams to start. The idea being is no one team, NBA, college, otherwise, in professional or collegiate elite sports, could do all of the analysis that they needed to do, whether that be data analysis, video analysis. And so the whole concept of the business, company, and product was born out of this idea of, how do I get access to the video and data I need to make the decisions I need

to make on a daily basis, knowing that I can't do it all myself, whether I'm an individual person or even a MBA franchise. And I saw that firsthand before joining Synergy in 2007. I was an assistant video coordinator with the Philadelphia 76ers. And even at that time, I was calling colleges to get a film sent to me via DVD.

I also did not send any of that film back. Did anyone ask you for it back when you were in the NBA? No, at least when you're in the NBA, they send it to you willingly and they actually will burn you a copy. So even at that time, we still had some VHS workflows that we worked on. So Synergy was just coming to pass

and it was really starting to gain traction. That's how I got introduced to the company, is it really revolutionized the way that front offices and coaches prepared for upcoming components, prepared for the draft. I'll give you a quick story. Even back then, before Synergy, the best case scenario, you started your draft preparation as an organization.

Most of the teams would look at three good games and three bad games for any player that they were interested in. It would, of course, then expand from there. But that was a product of the constraint that was imposed to you as, can't watch every game. There are 40 minute games in colleges. There's 30 of them being played. If you just start doing the math of minutes it takes

to break down, to understand what happened, it's just too much for one team. Now, what we did is said, okay, 30 teams are interested in this in the NBA. You have a bunch of international teams that pull from the same player pool. You have colleges that want it for coaching purposes. And so we became an aggregation platform. But at the same time, what we did is we broke down the game in a way that coaches and scouts

understood. So it was well beyond the box for this is deep event level data. And so we had at the time, it was probably 50 people in the business. It's now over 1,000 worldwide that helped break down this content. Again, back then, we were probably doing all the NBA games and as many D1 games we can get our hands on.

Today, we do 85,000 basketball games a year. And what we actually do is look at every possession of a basketball game and then identify the player that had the action. So anything that led to a shot, a foul that results in a free throw or turnover, anything that can give the ball to the other team essentially. And we log what play action happened. So the best example of that is something like LeBron James post up on the right block, turn left shoulder to an up and under with a dribble move, to a made basket, to a two point field goal, and he dunked the ball.

And then we take into consideration the other contextual elements of the game, who was guarding them at the time, what quarter, what was the time, what was the shot clock. And then back to what you talked about, we then make all that data available into our own platform for data analysis, so you can see how often someone

does something and how well they are at doing it, and also recall that video. So we were sort of cloud video before cloud video is really a concept in the tech space. Yeah, it's mind blowing that you can do this. And the biggest thing for me originally was like internationally, there could be some younger guy in a draft list and I'd be like, all right,

I would just give up. I mean if you go on YouTube every one of those guys looks like it's edited. It's gonna be a Hall of Famer. I remember watching the Yanis video and if you watch the Yanis video that I had available to me prior to the draft of Synergy, you just kind of shrugged. You were like, all right, he's kind of like impressive sort of but I'll never forget the gym. Like one of the gyms that he played in, the cushioning was like a gymnasium in an elementary school where you couldn't do anything beyond the basket because you were gonna slam into the wall,

even though the walls were padded because there was not much room between the baseline. And so, you know, that was one of the things that went into the onus and granted, if you're actually working for a team, you're getting on a plane and going over to see him. I guess except for the Knicks But did your I'm wondering like the path for you Did you see an inefficiency on it when you were working with a team and that made you go the other way or did the opportunity?

Just kind of present itself because we know how tough the NBA part of it. Like what how did that work for you? I would say anyone who's been in this industry, you always have a time in your career where you're between teams, right? So it's a natural occurrence that I am right. Loved my time in Philadelphia was fairly short. When that was over, I was looking for the next opportunity. I was doing some consulting for some other NBA teams

around similar type of things that Synergy did. It was actually focused on defensive player tracking and rotations. Again, a manual data creation process. You had to have a deep understanding of basketball and coaching. And a way to supplement that, I actually started with Synergy as one of those 30 to 50

people that were breaking down games. I did that for a little bit with the company. Eventually they hired me full time the next season to help oversee a support department that didn't really exist at the time. So it was the first, as a startup without a lot of funding, you sort of wore a lot of hats. Very quickly within that, was sitting within the intersection of the sales team and the engineering team. That was one person in sales, our CTO and one junior developer. And I was the customer-facing feedback loop.

And so I helped start organizing and bringing those groups together. Naturally, that evolved into leading and building out product team. Within a few years of that, so by 2014, our company had grown. We were then, we had all 30 MBA teams as clients. We were almost up to 100% of D1 men's basketball, which we ended up getting in 2015. Almost 100% of D1 women's basketball as clients,

which we ended up in 2016. And then there's a natural progression in 2015. I ended up overseeing all of the product and operations for the business. 2017 became president. Eventually, we actually sold that company, the original owner, and we came into a group that also had a computer vision and automated camera product line. Then two years after that, in 2021, we were acquired by SPORE Radar, which is the global leader in sports technology,

and helped build out where we are today, which is really focused on solutions in general for teams, leagues, and federation. And it's part of the larger ecosystem that is SportRadar, which focuses on immersive experiences for fans and betters. Okay, so let's talk about the old tracking versus the new tracking capabilities,

where you are at and what you are now able to do and the information that you're able to sort. Yeah, so everything I talked about to date, so far with you has been really predicated on the historical way that Synergy has produced data and that was with humans, two people per game breaking down different parts and doing it at a really large scale. The NBA over the last few years has had a player tracking system. And just to give a little bit more detail of what that actually is, is historically it was about six cameras in an arena. And what those cameras did is create coordinates. So represented

every player in the ball on the plane of the basketball court. And then right, tons of coordinates per millisecond. And it allowed you to recreate an understanding of where that player was at any given time and where the ball was. We only knew where the center of mass, so assume like the belly button and how that moved on that plane. Then machine learning could be used to create basketball specific events. Similar to what I described before of pick and roll,

it could also identify pick and roll based on those coordinates. And the benefit of computer vision that it's really good at understanding where everybody is at all times, where that becomes very expensive if you want a human to actually track that information. Jump forward to this season 23, 24, the MBA has changed that system over

and has a new 14 camera tracking system that now includes player pose data. So before we understood one point on a player at any given time, we now understand 29 different joint positions on that player. So think elbow, wrist, knee, hips, orientation, and all that is coming in and low latency. What we're doing with our expansive basketball expertise within the Synergy product set and product group

is taking that new type of data and creating a whole new set of basketball specific event data. Some overlapping with what we do manually, but a lot new. And it's a really new, exciting opportunity. And I think one of the best examples to help illustrate that is historically when it came to defense, we knew the proximity and the old tracking data of an offensive

player to the defensive player. Were they six feet away? Were they four feet away? Were they two feet away? Were they right on them? But what we didn't understand is the context of the limbs. And I'll sort of call out Mark Jackson here. Everyone who loves basketball knows hands down, man down. And that is a concept that really we couldn't understand in the old tracking data, because all we knew is where that person was in relation to the shooter.

But it's a big difference whether your hand is up contesting that shot if your hands are down, if you're up at the release point. Those are all material understandings of how effective is that shooter at shooting the ball and how effective is the defender defending the ball. And so that's really some of the exciting things that we're starting to see.

And what we've done is create a whole new set of data to sit alongside or manually collect the data off of this new player tracking data. Okay, so I'll give an example to the audience. I'll watch a game And I'll just use the Boston Denver one again, and I was like, okay when I'm watching it live I'm just watching it live and if I start rewinding a lot for game I care a lot about it can take way too long So sometimes I'll just watch through live and rewind occasionally here or there but then I'll know okay in the morning or later tonight

I'm gonna wait till it's logged on synergy and then I'm gonna, okay, in the morning or later tonight, I'm going to wait until it's logged on Synergy and then I'm going to go through. And so the old way I could just look at every Jokic possession and I could just take it upon myself to figure out which double teams I thought were real double teams. You certainly have it all sorted out where I could just look at the Celtics defensive possession sorted that way so I can find all of these different things. What is the new tracking capability allow you to discover maybe beyond what I'm just doing with just years of watching basketball and going like,

okay, that's a hard double, that's not really a double, I'll put that in the miscellaneous thing. Is this improving? Do these numbers actually mean that there is now unlocking a better understanding of what's happening with the tracking data. Yeah, it really does. And I think a lot of talk right now with Victor Webinama, how effective is he defensively? Is it matching the eye test? Yeah, let's do this because eye test tells me he's

defensive player of the year. And then you'll see some, look, the team isn't any good. Some people are going to have a hard time with that vote. Give me what synergy unlocks that maybe our eyes are not. Yeah, so you have sort of like a standard box where it's that of blocks per game. And we can see that historically, he's actually having a for a rookie, let alone anybody. He's up there and since 1972, the top eight rookies averaging three plus blocks. He's in rare company, right? And you have David Robinson, Shaquille Neil, Alonzo Mourning, Takenbe Mutombo, all in that group of eight.

When you look at actually what he's doing and sort of where his game starts to separate from anybody else in the league right now, and what we're able to see through the player tracking data is things like closeout blocks. So he is facing about 96 percentile of wide open jumpers, meaning there's a high frequency of him guarding wide open jumpers. But that effectiveness for those three point shots is below the average. And what it's telling us is that Wembe specifically, and no surprise here with his length, is able to really impact shots even when he's far away. And what we're starting to see is, well, that's because he's extremely long and being six

feet away for someone like Wemba Nyama is actually not being that far away. And further to that, what's really interesting is he has the most shots blocked when he is the closest defender at six plus feet at the Initiation of the play he's done it three times this year there's only One other player who matches that and no surprise here. I'll let you take a shot if you want to otherwise I'll give it to you Go there. So when you talk about is he really right effective is it he's a good player on a bad team the player tracking data is telling you based on positioning he's doing things that

no other player today outside of the other potential candidate and much discussed player of the year Rudy go bear like he's in rarefied company here and it's exciting to see I mean I enjoy watching them so yeah look I, look, I think there's, I think there's some stuff and I talked to Sean Elliott about it earlier today where I go like there's a couple of places on the Golden State game where I wouldn't even know what that would, there's no category to put that one in, but I know what happened or what didn't happen is because he was there. Um, so that's, that's good. All right. We want to talk New Orleans.

I know they got smoked by Cleveland last night. The defense, they've just been a strange team in that they haven't had all their pieces. They still have a good enough record in a really competitive West. But it feels like they're doing some things other teams aren't doing to remain competitive. Yeah. I think when you look at the Pelicans, one of the really interesting things is at the Pelicans, one of the really interesting things is anyone who knows the game knows the lifeblood, right? The engine of an NBA offense is typically pick and roll offense.

Now, you have some unique ways to run it, and you may have some different actions based on your personnel. But pick and roll is the most often run play type in the NBA. The data tells us that. Your eye test will tell you that. You have to be effective on it, typically to be good. And what we're seeing with the Pelicans is they're actually doing it in different ways. They still have a decent frequency of their pick and rolls, but they tend to be in the bottom half of their points per chance off of those opportunities.

You look at some of the other top teams in the West, all of them are in the top half of efficiency when it comes to pick and roll. You look out to the East, like Milwaukee and Boston, they're both ranking in the top five. And this is a sort of up and down category for the Pelican. So they are one of those, and I think you and I talked about it, where you're not sure what they're doing and how they're doing it. Conversely, their isolations are fairly effective and if you look at their personnel, there's probably a reason for that.

So I haven't dove much deeper than that, but they're extremely effective in driving the ball. They're extremely effective in isolations, but where they're not as effective as you would expect for a top five or 10 team in the respective conference or league is in that pick and roll play type. Yeah, and I actually think that I test does back that one up too, because there's just certain like I have this whole like, Hey, do you trust the stuff that they get into? Does it does it give you a good look? And then I feel like they're defaulting to more

and more Zion, which is better because it was such a disaster how we all collectively felt about him after the end season tournament. Um, but then I'm like, okay, are they just going to run points Zion and this curl into the paint? Like, is that going to win you a playoff series, especially considering they're going to likely be a bottom four team, uh, and not catch one of the top four. All right. So give me, give me some players that maybe be like, Hey, you know, he's a nice player, but there's something that they do

that is so elite in comparison. They're in such a high percentile that it's why they're gonna be in the league for such a long time. So I'll probably look at a player here that's more not necessarily on average, but he is performing at a level and in company that historically he hasn't quite been in.

So he's taken that next step up and that's Shea Gilgis Alexander. And when you look at his performance and looking at something that we call our player impact, synergy player impact, which is the net point impact that he has over 100 possessions per game, if you look at the top 10 in that, he is actually currently sitting at number 2. And this is a efficiency metric that allows us to understand how effective is he and what's

the impact he's having on the game. He's tied with Joel Embiid. I know Joel has been out for a little bit. But if you rattle off those next names that he's in that company and above everybody besides Nikola Jokic, who's number one, you're talking about Janis, Paul George, Devin Booker, Kawhi Leonard, Jason Tatum, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant. So it's one that we're taking a bunch of our different data manually and otherwise collected and just showing like,

he's the real deal. And the numbers and the efficiency stats are very much proving that out. And he's taken such a jump that he's now in that rarefied air of those players that you talk about best in the NBA. He's having that type of season. If you had an MVP vote, would you default to something

like this over, I don't know, whatever else the rest of us use? I take the approach the same way when I've talked to teams for the past 15 years. This is one input. We talk a lot about the eye test and one of the great things about the platform itself is the data is only one part of it. Every data point we give in this platform has the video behind it.

You can go and validate and make sure, yeah, I agree with what you're saying and that can help inform your decision. I think using any singular efficiency metric is not the way to go. It's combining everything that you know. So I wouldn't use this solely. I would definitely use this to help inform my decision if I had one. See, this is what I love so much about the program.

And obviously, I'm a junkie about it because it just helps me. It helps me like I'm thinking about something or I'm like, okay, well, let me pull up these or let me look at these. Like there's a couple of players where I still can't believe that the numbers as good as it is because when I watch them,

I just think like, I don't feel like that's necessarily the same thing but that's what the number tells me. But this isn't a threat. This is like a booster to scouting. You know, this should. It would shock me if scouts weren't in favor of this across the board, because all you're really doing is looking at it all over again. It's not looking like the video comes up.

Design the video feed however you want, edit it however you tailor it to whatever your needs are. This is, I would say, an additive to any front office, not something that would replace anybody. Yeah, absolutely. I think what we've seen over time, just think about what you used to, right? The amount of time you spent trying to get video,

that was time that you couldn't spend watching and sort of informing your opinion and viewpoint. No different for a front office, a coaching staff, and any level of competition is we try to take that initial effort that everyone should have access to good data and then you should be making those decisions against that data. So a lot of the time that we spend now is creating new insights. How can we show you this data that's easy to ingest, easy to communicate to your players and scouts? And so your skill set somewhat changes where you're no longer the person creating data all the time.

There's still data that every team wants to create that proprietary to them that they feel is important. But the skill set has somewhat changed. Now, using AI and other methodologies to understand the data better, there's a whole new group of analytics departments that didn't exist 15 years ago. Every team has one now to varying degrees.

So a lot of it becomes, how do we better understand this data? How do we then analyze it? How do we make good decisions against it? In order to make those good decisions, how do we communicate it? So I think early days, there was a huge perceived threat in

video rooms and front offices that this type of technology could replace them. Ultimately, it's made them more important. Those groups have actually grown in size and number, but the way they work is a lot more efficient and the work product they're producing is a lot more actionable and impactful for the organization, which drives their value. So I think the good thing is we're past the, is this a threat? Is this good or bad? And now it's the, every team is very much focused as how do I get the most out of the data available to us? And that's really what we're trying to accomplish

with the new player tracking is we want them to be able to have the information they need to make a decision surfaced in a way that's understandable and in a way where they can communicate out to their players, coaches, and front office members. Okay, last thing, do you watch games where like, I'll watch a game and then I'll run to Synergy to see if my theory is supported or destroyed? Because you're on the ground floor with this, you know all the inputs. Do you watch with an eye that is more likely to be confirmed by going back and looking at some of the data.

Because it's not just the tracking, it's not just the video, it's all sorted and basically like how efficient. When I do all my basketball profiles for the draft, which I just do on my own so that I have them, I'll go through everybody's possession tendencies and then you look at their percentile of efficiency. And it's actually like a really, really good, like you can look at five lines of somebody and be like, okay, I have a pretty good idea who this player is before I even looked at them.

But do you, because you've been in it so long, watch with an eye that is more aligned with the data that you pull up later? I think so. I think there's also a part of me that I actually used to be one of those loggers and there's probably muscle memory built in of I watch things and it's hard to disassociate with, oh yeah, I needed to in the past collect that data point. I view it the same way you do, right? I see things that then in my head go,

oh, is that actually a tendency? Is that a one-off? Like that's a very interesting action that they ran or that was an interesting result. And then I go back and I look at the data and say, is that a one-off? Is it actually a consistent thing? So I think I view it probably very similar to you.

And as just someone who's been around basketball, been around the data, it's hard to remove yourself from watching basketball games that way. So there was a time, I think, when I was watching many years ago, probably 100 games a week to break down and to provide data. And then at that point, your brain only works one way. games a week to break down and to provide data. And then at that point, your brain only works one way.

Now I'm a little bit removed from that where I'm not watching the games from a data creation purpose anymore. So I can find the enjoyment in it again. But still you look at things and you immediately want to validate, oh, is that a thing or is that just a one-off? So yeah, I'm with you there.

Okay, and here's the bad news. Probably people listening to me like, what's the web address again? Like, you just can't use it, right? You have to be with an affiliated team. Yeah, for the most part, we are a B2B service and we are here to help build the game of basketball for NBA college. We do work with high school teams. So there is a market out there for those of you as high school coaches. But for the most part, we do work with the teams themselves.

And our product is focused on that. So I apologize to all of the eager listeners who are ready to run out there. But yeah. Yeah. I didn't even know really how to end that without that being a complete bummer. So I'll just do it that way. But this is a lot of help and I always appreciate the time and the hours that I put into it because my job would be a lot tougher without the work you do. So thanks a lot, Mark. Appreciate it.

Thank you. Love hearing it. Appreciate having me on today. You want details? Buy. I drive a Ferrari. 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous house in the South Fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine.

And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. The email address is liveadvice.rr at gmail.com. What is good, Kyle? What is good, Steve? All right, let's get to it. We had a few follow-ups.

All right, we got a simple one and then a not so simple one. Let's do it. We got a kid email in here. So everybody's cycling, chiming on that one. Lowest approval rating emails. not gonna stop doing them though All right paying with cash at a bar five eight two ten two seventy five bench four or five squat I play rugby for a school. It's in the SEC badass alert stout Recently when I'm going out

I've been paying in cash not intending of being an asshole but the bartenders have a habit of running up my tab by tipping over 40% of my original tab. I was like, wait, what? Obviously this happens when I forget to close out said tab. Okay. Due to this tendency of having lost my card at a bar at night. I mean, doing it all the time? Yeah, it sounds like it's a big problem for him. In the pie chart of his life, it sounds like it's a big problem for him. Like it's in the pie chart of his life, it sounds like it's bigger than it should be.

So he's just going individual transaction now with cash every time he goes up. Okay, save that thought. I've been paying in cash. My friends think I'm being rude to the bartenders by being cheap, but it isn't their money. Am I rude for paying cash? Thanks for your help.

money. Am I rude for paying cash? Thanks for your help. So wait, Saruti, you think you think it's weird to pay cash? No. Each time you order around? No, I mean, as long as you're still tipping like the normal amount, which is, you know what, 20% right? I mean, 40% is insane. So obviously, you know, you're you're in college, you're probably not super liquid. So I get why you can't continue to pay 40% tips every time you go out Especially if you're buying drinks for other people So I'm just I just like as you get more and more drunk like paying cash for every individual transaction Seems like it could be a problem waiting to happen too But if that's a better system for you then then go I don't think I can't I've never been a bartender

But I can't imagine that would be a huge issue. I always thought they preferred cash because it's like less of a card, come back, whatever what I owe you. And I like to pay cash when it's like, I don't need the change. Like I'll like work the tip into the thing you have the bill and then do what you need to do with it. So if you don't need a bunch of change and then you're like figuring out math, I mean, yeah, you like, Hey, one time deal hundred? Like that's probably not awesome, but. Yeah, it used to be like you would just leave a buck. Like if you ordered a beer, you would go a dollar and then kind of a dollar to every drink.

I don't think people were necessarily tipping just a strict 20% while they were out at a bar because it just wasn't gonna to really work that way. I just thought it was interesting. I can't tell if he thinks his friends are saying it's rude because he's not tipping as much as he was before. If you're in college, you should be tipping 40% anyway. I don't know what the protocol is now with tabs in that you're just hammering every

single guy for 40% that leaves his card there. That doesn't seem awesome. But usually there'd be such credit card or debit card remorse that you just kind of like chalk it up to the right charges to the game, Kyle, on this one. Here's what I can tell you. I was around free debit card and then I was there for when everybody had it. And the places I worked fucking hated everybody that used a debit card, okay? And they would use it for every single round.

They wouldn't run tabs and we would go out of our fucking minds and the owner that owned the bar was you think I can be a little salty, he was the saltiest human being on earth and he would just yell at college kids the entire time. Screaming at them, even though he went to college there, but he was like a young bar owner, but older than everybody else at that time. I don't know, really didn't like very many people. I was considered super friendly in comparison to him, but he would be losing his mind because it just happened.

It was this just swell of momentum of debit cards where all of a sudden nobody was paying in cash, but people weren't running tabs. They were gonna be like, can I have a Bud Light? Like, all right, cool, same mic. Shut that down for me. Yeah, thanks.

Yeah, right. Yeah, you can close that one out. Like my thing would always be, I'll leave it open, I don't know. And the bartender is gonna be way nicer about like, hey, leave it open. And then, you know what? I'm actually just getting around, we're gonna close out.

Okay, cool. Like you potentially had a chance you were gonna add more drinks to it. Not that big of a deal. But is it now pivoted to the other point where people think just guys paying with cash on individuals? Or like people think that's rude. That can't be what this is. That's weird. But look man It sounds like you're getting whacked at 40% every single time you go out. You're a college kid You can't help you know, I you know, like are you letting loose? I'm not even gonna fuck like, I'm jealous of you, man. Keep doing your thing.

You needed to find a way to get the in-house expenses down and you found your way and your roommates can fuck off. Yeah, also the cash tips thing, like, I never quite made it to the mountaintop of being a server or bartender, as I've told you, that was always a dream of mine. But I think those, the cash tips, like, you know, Let's buy a bar, Kyle.

I got some friends working on it right now. But maybe somewhere in the valley, the write-in tips, you know what I mean? Like that stuff all goes through, like, you know, that comes through the credit card thing, and then it has to come back to you and your check, right? Whatever's in the tip jar, you got to split and take home, right?

So that's not necessarily reported and it's cash in your pocket. You're walking out of there with that money, right? So if you're tipping in the tip jar, you gotta split and take home. So that's not necessarily reported and it's cash in your pocket, you're walking out of there with that money. So if you're tipping in cash, that's usually going to them instead of going to the credit card people and then making its way into a separate paycheck or something.

Like I said, I never really got that. Ooh, we're talking taxes here. But they appreciate that, the take home, walk home, how much cash did I leave with instead of going through, and then you pay taxes on that. I'm not sure what the tax situation is, but I think if it's just money in a jar that you guys split up, like, is that all getting reported? Probably not. So I think you're actually, you know, if you're like trying to play a flag for the service workers, I think they do want to cash tips.

My other thought would be this is a group of Gen Z kids, I would assume that we're hanging out with here, college guys. Do Gen Z, do they even use cash anymore? I don't think they do. They get mad when bars don't have Apple Pay. Yeah, I mean, cash might be like... My buddy at Frolic was like, I had a kid yelling at me because we don't have Apple Pay. It's like, this is a bar that opened in the 30s. Fuck you and your Apple Pay.

That's like checks for, like nobody, when I was growing up in that age, like we just, checks were just something like your parents used. We don't use checks, now I've written a check. Someone at the grocery store writing out a check like oh my god. Yeah. You don't write any checks. You never write a check. I've written a check to the guy. How do you pay your property taxes? Oh it just comes out of the mortgage. Oh yeah. And then for my car you know I don't do it online. There's nothing.

I don't like writing. The only thing is the last check I wrote was, yeah, I think to the lawn care guy. I sent a check to get my passport. That was the last time. And I was like, oh my God, do I need to buy a new checkbook? But I found it after a deep clean. Deep clean. Okay.

I think we got that one covered. We're on this guy's side. You come up, the system sounds like it's cheaper. Yeah. The good thing about cash too is like, hey, are you bringing a hundred bucks tonight too? Like you can set a hard limit on this guy's side. You come up, this system sounds like it's cheaper. Yeah. The good thing about cash too is like, Hey, are you bringing a hundred bucks tonight too? Like you can set a hard limit on what you're spending. Yeah. But the problem is, is if you do bring that, you're going to spend it all no matter what. It's like having casino chips.

If you're a college kid with cash, you're not going home. You're like, Oh, I only spent 45 of my hundred. No, you didn't. Yeah. That tip gets bigger every time. If you're tipping every round too, by the fifth round, you're like, that 20's for you, buddy. Yeah. Well, see, not everybody has your heart, Kyle. Not everybody has your heart. I know you start feeling them a little bit.

They start running through the old veins and then you're like, man, this guy, this guy behind the bar is awesome. I'm gonna let him know what's up. Right, exactly. And I've fucking done it. So, I don't know. The good thing is you start hard tip early.

Now you can be setting expectations too hard. You could just be like walk in, get a couple drinks, play cake, keep the 20. That's when a beer falls off the truck there. That's what we're looking for. Then we've hit synchronicity. Then you end up paying more even though you feel special. It feels great. Yeah, it's dumber.

Actually, I want to tip you less. I'd like to be charged full and don't want any favors and it's gonna actually be cheaper. But my little bar ego is like, yeah, I got this, I threw this guy 10 bucks on the first round. Probably gonna let me date his sister. All right, here we go.

Double-breasted suit to job interview. Hey guys, first time, long time. Hell yeah. Yeah, let's go. I looked at a little double-breasted number when I was in Vegas. You did? Not in Vegas, but just in general. Yeah. I didn't know. I mean, I don't really have the physique, I think, to pull that off. It fit perfect. Small, but it was gaudy though. I was like, are you ever actually going to wear this? This is an expensive

joke. I was like, I could just bust this out at something I'm not supposed to wear it at and just like, what's up? How's it going? And be like, yeah, and then never wear it again. Expensive joke. Didn't buy it. 6'2", 185, Playra Comp. Is a better rebounding Andrea Bargnani, partially because of my sweet stroke, more because I'm a lanky Italian Canadian and can never escape the Il Maggio or Gallo references in rec ball. Lifting stats aren't impressive, but I've never escaped the Il Maggio or Gallo references in Rec Ball. Lifting stats aren't impressive, but I've returned to the iron paradise recently as I just moved to Dubai and I'm trying to keep up with all the influences out here.

Good writer. The Dubai move leads us into my question. My fiance and I moved out here from awesome job opportunity for her. I decided to quit my consulting job and try to reinvent myself in the desert in a more compelling industry aligned with my actual interests. My question is one of fashion bold font. Is it an aggressive move to wear a double-breasted suit to a job interview and bold? The internet is divided. I think that America's

leading menswear podcast could get a definitive judgment. For context, I'm living out of a suitcase as we wait for our furniture to arrive via the Red Sea, fingers crossed. Good writer, like I said. I don't think you could not do anything. Does that make any sense? Yeah. And the double breasted is my only option. I purchased a suit for my best friend's wedding last year and it fits so perfectly. It'd be a shame to waste it. However, as much as I wanna look like a go-getter, I don't wanna look like I'm gunning for the interviewer's job. I'm interviewing across a gamut of white collar jobs and the dress code airs on the formal side.

But again, double-breasted suits are a state. I just like this guy. I'd say attach this email to your CV and you're gonna be turning shit down. I don't know man. I don't know. Double-breasted. Is there an open option? Like you know I know sometimes with the suit buttons like sometimes always never with double breasted is it just is all that out the window? Is there a way this could be open? Just put everybody's mind at ease? Or is it just like does that guy not know how

to wear a double-breasted suit? I don't think they can be open. I mean, I'm sure you can and somebody's done it and you're gonna show me some Chalamet picture. It definitely looks worse. Yeah, but is it a model standing outside of like a museum in London? This guy's a CQ 185.

I'm not gonna go now wearing a shirt underneath it. He can't pull on an open suit. He's just wearing the suit jacket. Yeah. He's got a t-shirt on under. You can't look at those pictures and go, oh, I guess I'll just do that. That's what I the suit jacket. Yeah. He's got a t-shirt on under. You can't look at those pictures and go, oh, I guess I'll just do that. That's what I'll look like.

You know how many times I've fallen victim to that, being like, look at that, look, I look sick. And then I bring it home and I look like an idiot wearing whatever it is, whatever it's turtlenecks, whether it's Don Draper. I mean, the suit thing. Stop buying stuff. The suit thing.

So what's the job, too? I think what is the job? A gamut. Right? It's a gamut of white collar jobs. The suit thing. So what's the job too? I think what, what is the job? He doesn't say it right. It's a gamut of white collar jobs. Cause you don't want to. I think he's in Dubai, man. And I think it's all bets. Like there's no rules in Dubai.

Right. There's like lions as pets and stuff. I think, yeah, I wouldn't worry about it too much. I remember I had a job interview fresh out of college. This was like 2010 ish and I had just gotten like this nice jacquard blue suit. Really excited about it. I was also kind of in that thing where I was applying for jobs and I didn't know if I wanted to. I was like a broadcast journalism major so I had like a lot of like news background and like I didn't know if I wanted to go into

like being a TV anchor quote unquote. So I was applying for a bunch of different jobs. This was not a TV job. This was a behind-the-scenes job at the history channel and I walked in to the interview like looking good like I had this awesome blue suit white really clean looking hair cut was kind of hair what kind of hair we do at that point it was normal it wasn't anything great I hadn't grown the bun out yet so it was just but it was like a clean sort of like you know news anchor looking thing and the the person I remember the girl interviewing me like she said to me,

you don't look like this is the job for you. Oh, god damn. In a good way, though. No, in a good way, being like, you look like you should be aspiring to do bigger things than this current entry-level data endpoint job at the History Channel. Quick aside. And you get the job. Was she trying to bang? No. No, she's way older. No, definitely. I've misread that situation before, but I really

don't think so. I think she was honestly just like you, you know, you just, you just don't look like the part for this job. Like you look too clean up for this job. Like, and I didn't get it. I don't know if that was the case. Yeah. Maybe she actually didn't like you. That could might've been just a soft no. Maybe, maybe, but I didn't get the impression that was it and I'd yeah, I never got the call back. So Then here I am today. It's Dubai. You're from Canada You don't have anything else. You feel good in it. You're confident. I

Say swing for the fences and throw that sucker on Yeah, and just practice see if it open open, it makes you feel better about it. And it probably won't. Like I said, I've seen maybe now 30 pictures, only one is open and he has like a t-shirt on under it. But I would just say if we're checking in front of the mirror, just see if you're like, could this work? People are gonna argue about this too.

We're gonna get a lot of feedback. We're like, oh, you actually can do it or whatever. Most of us can't is the point. But I think Dubai is so international. I think it's so void of rules. There's so much going on where it's about just your presentation to the extreme showing off that I, I like the place that hires you because you're wearing the double breasted suit. Like this guy's a real player. This guy's on the come up. I think if you're like applying to an accounting job in Des Moines, yeah, you're right.

Maybe the double breasted option is not the one you picked. You look like we can't trust you, man. Yeah. Guys from Des Moines chiming in this week. Like, hey, fuck you, Saruti. Nothing against Des Moines, it's just like, you know. You're right, you're right. Hey, I want to be-

They're more substance than style, I think. I'd like to be the GM of Home Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska. Okay. Sick bronze Gucci double-breasted. I want more substance and style. I think I'd like to be the GM of Home Depot in Lincoln, Nebraska. Okay Sick bronze Gucci double rested. This might not be the spot for you and like a ton of ankle showing no socks, obviously Yeah, yeah, I saw it Dwayne Wade. We're these walking into a game for 2012 you've just conference semis and I ordered them immediately These are the Capri cut So what kind of what kind of pressure of pressure treated numbers are you guys doing?

Uh, all right. Yeah, man. Where? All right. Let's do one more quick. Hello. 2862, 205, 305, 335, 415 splits, former college football player, small school basketball, um, Perot on t football player, small school, basketball. Perro Antich. That's a good one. He looks like the bad guy from Superman. I have a nephew who's going to the eighth grade next year and he was on his first season playing football. I thought he was in pretty good shape, but I didn't know anything about 12 year olds. When I brought him out to work out with the team, I realized he was a monster,

literally the best kid on the field instantly. They put him at running back. He was incredible. Seeing as my brother and sister-in-law, while very invested parents knew nothing about football, I figured I'd join the coaching staff and pass on some knowledge to the youths. Fast forward to now, the coaches from our previous team who take themselves extremely seriously,

moved what I would call an elite high school program here. We'll leave out the location, but this is a factory type area in the South. The program's 25 minutes away from our house. Practices are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, from six to eight games or Saturdays, just for reference for the commitment. My problem is that we went a couple workouts

at the new place. We talked about me joining and bringing him with, but without me giving the head coach a yes or a no. He added me to the coaching staff. Now I'm getting texts and emails constantly from the program. They're about to start the spring practice, which is wild. They're 12, 13 years old and they think I'm the line coach. Just for clarity, the text I sent before he added me to the staff officially was,

quote, I am not sure if we were going to be able to, or not. I need to talk to his parents. Now I've waited two weeks to say, I'm not going to coach there. Did I get big dog by this guy? Is it dumb that I feel bad that I'm most likely going to back out? Is there any reason I shouldn't back out? Yeah, he's not your kid. You don't want to do that, man.

You don't. You're explaining it to us. Six to eight, a major, major area, I'm not gonna name it, metropolitan area. I know what it's like to drive down there. It sucks. But yeah, I mean, it is a 12 year old. So, I mean, you can ask him, like,

what's he gonna be like? Be like, hey, you don't want, do I understand this email correctly? What's the abstract here I was gonna ask? Is it that he was like, this program was, this kid isn't already going to the school. Like he said the program moved and that these he, he might be going with them. If also trying to bring this, his nephew as well. Is that what's going on?

This wasn't the best. Like, are you the bag man here is what I'm asking. Like, are you the guy who's like, are you shepherding this kid? Are you like waiting for Nike to knock on your door? I know you're not. I don't think he's trying to do any of those. I know he's not, but is that, is that what they're expecting of him? Let me read it again. My problem is that we went to a couple of workouts in the new place.

We talked about me joining and bringing him with, but without me giving the head coach a yes or no. That's just not the best. So conversations that didn't end definitively. Well, I don't know. The use of words in that line could be better, right? Sure. I think I get it now that you've said it. I think I get it,

but we needed another word in there, I think. He added me to the, but without giving the head coach a yes or no, he added me to the coaching staff. Now I'm getting texts and emails. So it sounds like they just put you on the staff. You don't really want to do it. But without you, the kid isn't going to be on this team. If the kid is that good. I'm just, I guess maybe I'm wondering why are you driving the kid? If the kid wants to do it, isn't that kind of on his parents even if they're not super invested? The other guy probably doesn't even necessarily need you to be a coach if these guys are taking it that seriously, right? Yeah. I think you could totally, this is, this is a great spot for an excuse.

I mean, just think of a good one, preferably without somebody being sick. So you don't have to like, you know, continue to put that out into the ether, but roller bones down here. Yeah. The point is he put you as a coach because he wants the kid to play on the team. Right. That's in my misreading. Yes.

I believe that. So then, so yeah, you're just being used here. Like they want the kid to play in the team. Yeah, so if this guy doesn't wanna do it, is the kid not on the team or are they like cool? Sounds like it. Yeah. No, I'm thinking about just transportation.

Oh, you're saying like, yeah, consult the kid. I'm pretty sure the team will still want the kid, the nephew, if he's this nasty, because that's what coaches would want. So they're like, cool, man, you've been demoted from D line. No problem. Tell tell your nephew practices tomorrow at six. You know, like we don't care about you. Yeah, I think that does that mean? Does that mean the parents aren't gonna give him a ride? Yeah, I

think you gotta talk to other people. I don't know, just make the excuse that like, yeah, I mean, now I'm volunteering nights or something. Something happened, I don't know, but like, just make it so like, don't say you don't wanna do it, but just be like, ah, I can't. Everyone respects and I can't, so. All right, that's life advice. Incomplete, it feels incomplete.

Can you, you know what, send us a follow-up. Send us a follow-up Send us a follow up. Maybe. All right. Thanks to Kyle. Thanks to Saruti. Thanks to Mike on this one. Ryan Rassilla podcast, Ringer's Potiphar. and and and

and and and and and and and and

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