Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Leo Rautins: Toronto Mike'd #467

Episode Date: May 20, 2019

Mike chats with the "kid from Keele Street", Raptors TV analyst and former NBA player Leo Rautins about growing up in Toronto, being an NCAA star, being the first Canadian drafted in the first round of the NBA draft and covering the Toronto Raptors since day one.

Actually, I have a special clip I want to start with here, so we'll start again here. But here we go. The glory of podcasting. Hey, there's Leo. Who's Leo? Uncle Leo. Oh, yeah, right. Uncle Leo.

Forgot his first name. Yeah. Toronto VK on the beat I'm in Toronto where you wanna get city love I'm from Toronto where you wanna get city love I'm a Toronto Mike, wanna get city love My city love me back, for my city love I'm in Toronto where you wanna get city love Welcome to episode 467 of Toronto Mike'd,

a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, Propertyinthe6.com, Palma Pasta, Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair, Camp Ternasol, StickerU.com, and our newest sponsor, Capadia LLP CPAs. I'm Mike from TorontoMike.com, and joining me is the kid from Keele Street, Raptors TV analyst, NBA player, and the tallest person to appear on Toronto Mike so far,

Leo Roudens. Welcome, Leo. What's happening? And just for the record, because everybody's been bugging me about this, you got in your seat okay. Yeah, I did not hit my head. I'm clear. I'm good.

No injuries. Not yet. Here's what will happen. We'll wrap up, and you'll be like, thank God that's over. And you'll leap up to get out of here. And that's when you'll be. Well, you know what one of my pet peeves is? Tell me. When people always say, hey, watch your head.

What do you think I do my whole life? I mean, do you think I want to knock my head off everywhere? When I get on a plane, when I go on a, watch your head. I look at the hostesses on the plane and go, seriously? Come on. I'm the last person you have to tell to watch my head. You're so right because you've been living your life that way. Exactly.

The danger zone are those 5, 10 guys who have never had to watch their head. And they're like, they think I'm joking. And then they smash it. You're absolutely right. You're the last guy I need to remind to watch his head down here. Well, thank you anyways for not smashing your head. I'm really like, I'm just soaking this in. I'm so glad you're the last guy i need to remind to watch his head down here but uh well thank you anyways for not smashing your head i'm really like i'm just soaking this in i'm so glad you're here because uh like last night firstly of course the game goes into double overtime and you're on

sports net call in that game with with uh matt devlin and then later i'm kind of watching some post-game stuff on tsn you You're back on the floor, right? I said to my wife, I said, Leo's back doing another. We weren't done after that. Then we had Raptors tonight on social media. So we'd had another 45 minutes or so chatting. You, by the way, really bring it to the social game. I think you're one of the best canadian meet uh sports media uh

tweeters well it's uh everybody tells me i'm crazy they say like why do you answer everybody and i'm going well what's the point of being on there if you don't kind of interact right it's about engagement yeah you get it and you're right even if it's just like sometimes i i get happy if i get a leo like one of those emojis i't know, the guy who's laughing so hard he's crying. Well, that's the thing. I mean, I think, you know, you can't sit down and write a whole story with everybody you talk to. So sometimes just giving a thumbs up or a fist or something, I think it lets people know that you're listening to them, you hear them, you know, you appreciate it. Yeah.

And back in the day, like mean not even that long ago like give i don't know 10 15 years ago like this engagement didn't exist like you know you were on our televisions in our living room but there was no way unless we wrote you a piece of snail mail and we hoped maybe right you'd reply and some did some didn't i guess but most of us didn't bother to try but now like yeah anybody watching the game last night, and millions watch that game, can get an emoji from Leo. And it's not like you have a social media team. That's really you. That's me, right in the middle of the game,

right during the timeout. And it's funny. Sometimes people say, they're waiting. You can see they sent it several times, waiting for the answer. I go, dude, I'm calling the game. And you think they know that, but you know what happens? People see you on the TV and that's when they have the moment of like, oh yeah, Leo, I should ask him something.

Like it's almost like that triggers that you exist and I should reach out. So it's like they reach out to you when you're least able to reply. Well, it's one thing that's kind of cool about it when you think about it that you have access right like you said other than you know sending a letter years ago you don't know whatever you have access and uh you know for the most part people are really really good obviously you have people that abuse that and and sometimes like i remind people not in an arrogant way but you know you have access that means you know you you normally would not have any access to people on TV or, or athletes, or you wouldn't have any access. So don't abuse it. Right. You know, just, uh, enjoy it, appreciate it. Just like no different than to say, I appreciate the interaction.

Right. I, I, you know, I don't abuse it. I appreciate it. And it's, it lets you, uh, you know, kind of chat with a lot of people that are watching and enjoying the game, so it's great. You're a rather positive guy. Every morning I know when Leo's having his coffee. You know what I mean? And by the way, I was thinking I would be going up there making some fresh pressed coffee for you right now

if you didn't bring a coffee because I'm like, Leo's going to need a coffee to do this at 8.30 in the morning. Well, the funny thing is people think I drink just gallons of coffee, right? And I'm not. I usually wake up in the morning. I have a couple. So this is my second. And just get my day going.

And I love espresso. And I don't sleep well regardless. So having a coffee, I have no trouble falling asleep. I can have 10 espressos and go to sleep. I just won't stay asleep. That's my problem. But after dinner, I enjoy an espresso and things like that. Now let's, okay, and I'm like you.

I know there are some people, like my mom, for example, if it's after 2 p.m., she's like, I can't have a coffee. I'll be up all night. And I don't have that gene or whatever. Like I can have a large coffee at like 11 p.m. and be gone by 11.30. I might have to wake up and go to the bathroom, but that's a whole different thing.

So let's talk specific about last night, though. So, of course, and you've done enough talk about the game, and you're going to be talking about this game, so I'll keep that to a minimum. But Raptors won. Can I say something about that? Yeah. You can talk about anything you want,

because you know what people always apologize for? Hey, sorry, I don't mean to talk basketball. I know I... Yeah. You this is, you know what people always apologize for? Hey, sorry, I don't mean to talk basketball. I know. Yeah. You know what? It's what I do. You know, I actually don't mind.

Like I run into people all the time. They come up to me on the street. I actually don't mind. And you don't. So if you run into me, you don't have to apologize. Because that's what I do. That's good to know. Because I think a lot of people. Because you're, first of all, a hard guy to miss.

Like you're one of those guys where that's. I don't think that's Leo Rodens. That can only be one person. I don't blend. No. What is your height, official height? Official height, now I'm shrinking, I'm sure, six, seven and a quarter. Is that, I have to ask this.

So, when I was young and impressionable, I thought listed height was real height. No. And then I, here's what happened. Let me tell you. I met Ty Domi. This is it, okay? And I was pretty young, in like early 20s. And I guess that's not that young Let me tell you. I met Tidomi. This is it. I was pretty young, in the early 20s. I guess that's not that young. I'm a naive guy.

In my early 20s, I meet Tidomi and he was listed in my playbook as 5'10". I was looking down at Tidomi and I realized, I'm looking down at a guy who's 5'10". I'm not 5'10". I'm a little under 5'10". This 5'10 is nonsense.

I never figured out because any team you ever play for, the measuring is ridiculous. They tweak, twist, do whatever they have to do to know everything about you. And then you look at the booklet, I go, wait a minute. And so I've been everything from 6'8 to 6'9". So it's depending, I guess, what sneakers I have on and everything else. Sure. And even when you try to correct people, my son Andy was playing for Canada.

Yeah. And I looked at the thing. They had him listed at 6'3". I said, dude, you know, I'm talking to the guy that does it. He says he's 6'5 1⁄2". And that matters. Yeah, you went the other way. When NBA scouts go to a game or whatever, they're going to look at that.

And it gets ingrained in somebody. I go, you know you measured them. Just make it right. You never see it that way, though. They always add the two inches. Or if you're a 7'4", they make you 6'9", which I don't get. Oh, I didn't know they were doing that. That's ridiculous.

There's this addition and subtraction that happens that makes no sense. So I'll need to see your doctor's records. When does Leo Rudin's doctor have you listed at? 6'7"? What does Leo Rudin's doctor have you listed at? Six, seven? Well, like I said, I think I'm losing about a quarter inch every three years at this point. Oh, where's it going? Dad'd like to know that.

I wonder if I could have it. You know how you have the carbon trading? Like one company's using too much, one's less, they can trade off or whatever. I don't even know if that still exists. I think it does, but it should. That's a good idea. But I would like,

if you lose like a quarter of an inch or whatever, if I could have it. I've been even know if that still exists. I think it does, but it should. That's a good idea. But I would like, if you lose like a few, like a quarter of an inch or whatever, if I could have it. I've been standing at Jonas Valanciuta's doorstep for the same thing, so it hasn't helped.

So last night, oh yes, I want to know the height just to see if that was the real height or whatever. But last night, okay, last night, Raps win.

You know, you're not down in a series. Can I, here's the other thing. Forever I've been telling my kids and everybody, you're not down in a series. Can I, here's the other thing. Forever I've been telling my kids and everybody, you're not down in a series until you lose at home because I grew up hearing this adage. But of course, the Raptors could never lose at home

and lose the series. So is that, what's the point of making that bold statement? I don't know. You know, everybody comes up with something. And, you know, I think, and I keep reminding folks on Twitter that it's a series, right? The hardest thing in pro sports is to win four games.

Right. I mean, it's not the NCAA championship. Anybody can win one. Anybody. Yeah. And we've seen that in the tournament, right? But you would never have an upset in the NCAA tournament if you had to win four times. It's a grind.

So you remind people that, yeah, you can talk about statistics and this and that, but you're down one. Okay. You're down two. Okay. You're going home. Yeah, you can talk about statistics and this and that, but you're down one, okay. You're down two, okay, you're going home. You can even it up. And now you're square again. And everything constantly changes. It's difficult, but you never want to get down. You just got to stay in it.

So last night, it takes a couple of overtimes, but the Raptors do win. By the way, I always wondered this. Now, you cover the Raptors. You've been covering them since 95, I guess, since they were born, day one. And we're going to dive a little deeper into that soon. But would you call yourself, like I know you speak to Raptors fans, but are you actually a Raptors fan? Hi, I grew up in the city.

I prayed for NBA. I mean, it was my dream to play for an NBA team in Toronto. And there were times I thought it was going to happen. So, yeah, I'm a fan. I'm not a fan. You know, when I do a game, I'm not a fan fan, right? But I want Toronto to win. You know, of course I do. And I want the Leafs to win? But I want Toronto to win. You know,

of course I do. And I want the Leafs to win. I want Toronto FC to win and the Blue Jays to win. And I mean, you are, I mean, you're an interesting case cause you're, you're Rogers and it's how your TSN and sports net.

So a lot of times, you know, we'll talk about that too. But when you're calling a game, like because you're the home broadcaster, it's a okay for you to leak out a little bit of raptured love, I want to say. You're allowed to be a little...

Okay, and I think this is a fine line you walk. Okay, so we're a home broadcast. We're also a national home broadcast because it's just the way it is. It's the national team. It's the only one in the country. And, you know, I'll get fans saying, why are you telling us about Malcolm Brogdon?

Why are you saying he's such a good player? Because that's what I do. Okay? So at the same time, you know, you're obviously, there's going to be some slant towards the home team because this is the team everybody wants to see. We're the only broadcast still going in the NBA other than ESPN and TNT.

We're the only broadcast. If we make the finals, do you still get it? Yes, which is unbelievable. Every broadcast, every team's got their own broadcasters and everything, and they all look at us going, oh, man, you guys get to go. After the first round, they're all done. It becomes network TV.

That's it. But we're network, and we're Canada. So we keep going. And so it's amazing. But, yeah, there's this slant, but you try to make it, you know, you try to be as impartial. I hate talking about referees. I know there's a bad call, and I'll say it's a bad call,

but at the same time, it's a bad call against the other team. I say that. I don't like blaming referees for games. I just like, you know, call the game. No, great. Now, okay, so last night, and if that's breaking news, Kawhi's okay, right? Kawhi's okay.

Because I saw him limping last night. My wife's waking up telling me the dogs are okay, so I've got to let her know I'm doing this. I've got questions about the dogs, too, coming up. You've got it. Tell your wife you're coming home with lasagna and beer. She just wants me to come home and take care of the dogs. Well, she probably hasn't seen you in a while.

So last night, she was like, when's leo coming home so and that she's probably rooting she was probably rooting for a buck sweep just to get you back no no no my wife's a serious sports chick i mean i'm not kidding you if you you can she i keep saying please tell me your picks i can make money like nfl she's ridiculous wow and and you listen all the nfl guys money. NFL, she's ridiculous. And you listen to all the NFL guys on a Sunday morning. She's going, that guy's full of crap. And she's right. At the end of the day, she's the one that's right.

It's ridiculous. And also, she's a huge Raps fan. The only differences we have, obviously I'm a Syracuse guy. Right. She's a Carolina girl. Oh, I heard this caused some conflict. Yeah, it's caused some issues. And it really hurt in the NCAA tournament one year. She's got these little, what do you call those things?

Domes, domes, these little statues. What do you call those things? Anyway, these little... Gnomes. Yeah, gnomes. A little Syracuse guy, a little North Carolina guy. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Garden gnomes or something.

So they're sitting, yeah, they're sitting in the garden. So morning after Syracuse lost, there's a Carolina gnome sitting on the edge of the pool and the Syracuse guy floating upside down. I go, that's cold. That's really cold. No, that is cold, but that's great too. But when she was conflicted, when my son Andy

played for Syracuse, they hammered North Carolina. And she had to actually cheer for Syracuse. Yeah, That's a no brainer, right? The blood is thicker than water as they say. That's, that's important. So,

uh, okay. So tell me though, what time do you get out of the Scotiabank arena last night? Approximately? Uh, you know what? I don't even know what time it is. I'd say probably an hour and a half after the game.

Okay. So it was not, it was a seven, not an eight 30, which is good, but then the two overtime. So I'm feeling, is that like about midnight?

Yeah, I'd say pretty close to midnight. Okay, and you said you have trouble sleeping. No, I have no trouble falling asleep. But staying asleep. So what, like is this, like do you know why or is it just how you're wired? No, I think it's just the older I get, just the way it is. I don't, like I don't stress about it. Like I don't, you know, worry about it.

I sleep when I can sleep and if I don't sleep i don't stress whatever ted is uh on twitter actually asks uh did you watch the game of thrones finale live or the raps game i think ted's being funny there but do you watch game of thrones you know what basically no but so my wife tried to get me in on it right yeah and we ended up watching like the first three years okay i, I watched the first three seasons. Yeah. I got bored and bailed. Yeah, see, I don't want to, I don't watch a lot of TV, but when I do, I don't want to have to think to the point where I'm getting a headache.

And she's going, so I go, who's this guy? Well, no, this is this, but in the first, no, that, no, that's changed now. He's dead. I go, no, I can't. It's too much work, right? Yeah, it's too much work. You're trying to remember who's on. You're going to think this is really weird.

You're going to think this is really weird. I hate, you know, they like these civil war movies where guys are in the horses and it's cold and they're in the mud. Yeah. You know, well,

these movies, Game of Thrones, all the battles are out there. It's everybody's always cold. You could see their breath. There's that. Yeah. That wall and there's winter and all this.

Yeah. One of the, you know what I hate more than anything else? Cold. Okay. So I don't want, like, I actually, I watch that, and I just feel uncomfortable. It's cold. Oh, like, you don't like to, yeah, I can understand that.

Yeah, like some guys, you know, he's got no gloves on. You could see the air coming out of his mouth and the snowflakes. I'm thinking cold. Yeah. I'm cold. You want your series to take place like on Miami Beach? Yeah, yeah. South Beach, feet up.

I know. I see your Instagram photos or whatever. Yeah, you're Mr. Chilling out by some water. My favorite thing to do is I'll be at a beach somewhere, and I'll put my feet up. And it's kind of like this is where I'm at picture, right? Yeah. And I send that.

I tweet it out a lot, but I'll send that picture to all the guys I know that are sitting in an office. I go, hey, man, miss you. Thinking about you. And you should see all the FU responses I get. Yeah, because that's kind of a dick move, Leo. It definitely is. It definitely is.

And I probably have more pictures of a finger coming back at me. So it's kind of funny. It's like everybody keeps saying, yeah, I got this whole wall of your beat pictures. That's great. And yeah, and I don't, again, like I said, I watched three seasons of Game of Thrones. I literally, and I almost try not to talk about this too much

because people love this show so much. I don't want to piss on their parade or whatever. But I felt, I got bored bored it just seemed like just relentless the battles and like a beheading and it just i just didn't dig it like i didn't find it very i prefer more like a realistic television show and you got then a dragon shows up and these dead guys are marching towards you and i'm like i don't know i'll just do something else with my time it seems like every time there's a there's a really good show it now that obviously game of thrones a little different but some of these other good shows they end up getting so crazy where you know you're going okay just stick to what you started with because now i'm like i like ray donovan right you still like that show

but then all of a sudden he's taking on the entire russian mafia right i mean come on dude like this is one guy you're right they got to kick it up a notch yeah where do you go from here just i like right again you clean up the problems you know throw some celebrities in there that works for me the russian mob you're not taking on all these guys relax so true now you mentioned uh the dog here but okay so right ian wintrip uh says leo roudens is my hero the basketball dude with the dogs and a cat but i'll let that pass so maybe give us a little right off the top before we dive in here um an update on the the zoo as you call it all right well so we have the uh yorkie charlotte you know the 10 year

old yorkie she's a wild man she's the boss she runs the show and then uh summer my leon burger she's a monster beautiful girl uh great disposition and then uh we had a pug he passed away unfortunately which was brutal uh but then um and we had a boxer before that so we're like you know we're all on one of this stuff right and uh so then this summer i was in a vet with my with summer summer, I was in a vet with Summer. This summer, I was in a vet with Summer. And there was a lady. This is a funny story. Yeah.

This lady walks in with a carrier. And everybody's going, oh, Bigfoot, Bigfoot. I'm looking around. I go, who the hell is Bigfoot? Right? And I shouldn't even have been there because the doc said go home. I said, no, I'll just sit here and wait. So I'm sitting. And then they take the carrier.

They go in. A few minutes later, they come back out everything's great everything's great bigfoot's great i'm going who the hell's bigfoot and then the lady starts crying she goes oh my gosh i feel so bad this is the greatest little thing i got to give him away go back to rescue i go excuse me can i see what's in there and i pulled this little black cat out that had monster paws he had extra claws like why yeah exactly and and i'm sitting there looking at this guy and we looked at each other and i go i text my wife i i said babe she goes bring him home oh wow so we got and we named and the doctor's name was frederico and we love puerto rico so

that's rico okay and uh then i said i wanted another companion for summer, the Leonberger. So I went back to the breeder where we got her from, and I said, we need a boy. And now we have Cooper, and Cooper is going to be an absolute monster. And that's new. When did Cooper show up? Cooper showed up end of April, April 30th. No, no, March 30th. March 30th, still fresh.

That's wild. So is there any limit? Like, does your wife put a cap on this? Or do you have a cap on this? She put a cap on it before Cooper. But you got to understand, I tell her, wait a minute, I'm the one that wanted no pets because I knew we have pets.

I'm going to be the walker. I'm going to do this. Well, guess what? We've had how many? So I said, okay, this one's mine. I'm going to be the walker. I'm going to do this. Well, guess what? We've had how many? So I said, okay, this one's mine. I'm getting them, and that's it. Now, you have trouble sleeping already, so it's probably something you can do, I think, when you're up.

I don't know. You know they're sleeping. You know what's funny? How animals, like my wife, she's got a few things that prevent her from sleeping comfortably, but her best sleep oftentimes comes early in the morning, right? And if I'm not around, those dogs will not dare, dare wake her up until she's up, right?

When I'm home, they're licking my face at 6.37 because they know we're going for a walk. They know. That's right. Dad's here. Let's go. That's great. That's great.

So glad you got the zoo and we got the cast of characters there. for a walk. That's right. Dad's here. Let's go. That's great. That's great. So glad you got the zoo and we got the cast of characters there. So thank you, Ian, for that. I want to thank a couple of sponsors before we talk about Toronto.

You're a true Toronto guy, so I'm just going to thank a couple of sponsors really quickly here. Camp Tournesol is a French camp, so this is the time of year you need to register

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Again, campt.ca. And when you register your child for one of these fantastic French camps, please use the promo code Mike2019 because you'll save yourself a little money and it lets them know you heard about them on Toronto Mic'd. I also want to thank our newest sponsor, Capadia. Capadia LLP CPAs. They're an accounting firm, so CPAs,

but they see beyond the numbers. Rupesh Kapadia there is a rock star. This guy, you can talk to him, but any business ventures you're considering, anything to do with money or business, this guy will give you the best advice and the best practices, and again, sees beyond the numbers.

Leo, he's happy to give you a free 30-minute consultation if there's any business ideas or anything at all you want to run by Rupesh and find out. Million dollar loan? Yeah, he's the man, I'm sure. No interest? No, I can't speak for Rupesh, but he is a rock star. And by the way, damn huge Raptors fan. He's got seasons tickets and heck, he might give you a interest-free million dollar loan but i'll let rupesh speak for rupesh so again it's capadia llp.com and just go to toronto mic.com and click the logo if you aren't sure how to spell capadia but good people and i'm happy to put you in touch with uh rupesh now leo in fact i want to

start with a little song here get this kind of going. Just to bring us back because we're going back in the time machine here. Because you're a true Toronto guy. I got the most lovely note. Okay, there's a gentleman

who listens to every episode of Toronto Mic named Jack O'Neill. Well, we'll call him, for this story, we'll call him Jack O'Neill Jr., okay? So Jack O'Neill, loyal listener, his father was Jack O'Neill Sr. And Jack tells me that Jack O'Neill Sr. was one of your first, if not your first, basketball coach at James Cullinan. Do you have any memories of this? James Cullinan. Do you have any memories of this? James Cullinan, yeah. James was seventh, eighth grade.

But my coach was Chester Juba. So I'm not sure. I don't know if there was another coach I'm missing, but yeah, Chester Juba is the one that jumps out at me. Well, what I have for you is after this recording, if you pass on your email address, I can email you a note I have from Jack O'Neill for you. So maybe this will shed some more light on it.

So I'll pass on that note from Jack. But this is a West End. I'm very familiar with this area because I used to play wall ball at James Coleman. So it's a box, we used to call it. So tell me about, you know, I called you the kid from keel street off the top here but uh bill king who's been on the show that's my guy right there

bill king yeah he's the coolest cat man he used to play janice joplin yeah yeah oh i know his musical his background and and his radio show amazing yeah and his son uh won a juno award for like i want to say for a reggae, I want to say, but Jesse King. But so Bill King, who's definitely listening, he writes, he played ball with you when you were a kid at Keele Street. And he watched you grow from a 10-year-old to a 15-year-old. And you beat everyone. He says he first played against your brother, George, and he broke my head. He was so good.

Leo, love catching you doing basketball. Always solid and knowledgeable. Yeah, so maybe bring us back and just tell us a little bit about your stomping grounds on your way to St. Michael's College there. Well, it's kind of funny. I have, for a Canadian, I'd say a very unique

background in basketball. Number one, I'm Lithuanian. Okay, so in Lithuania, all the kids' national sport is basketball. Number one, I'm Lithuanian. Okay, so, you know, in Lithuania, all the kids, the national sport is basketball. They're crazy about it. You talk about fans that travel, they are unbelievable. And so all the Lithuanian kids in Toronto,

we all played hoops. And naturally, I played hockey like every other kid, but we had the Church of the Resurrection, you know, West End, where you, there was always, you know, gym was open. Where was it? Right around off of Roncesvalles, you go down to, I'm sorry, Lansdowne and Dufferin area. Okay, okay, Lansdowne, Dufferin.

So it's funny, later we always talk about the Galleria Mall on this show because I worked at the Galleria Mall, and then a sponsor of this show is selling cond talk about the Galleria Mall on this show because I worked at the Galleria Mall and then a sponsor of this show is selling condos at the Galleria Mall now. It's going to be condos. But yeah, so I'm just, I know that area well, Lansdowne and Dufferin. Yeah, you know West End, there used to be a chocolate factory, like a Hershey's. Okay, you know what, that is Sterling. Huh?

Dundas and Sterling. Yeah, okay, so and when you walked out, I remember on warm nights you walk out of the church. You can smell the chocolate. Oh, it was overwhelming. So the rail path along the train now comes out at Dundas and Sterling, and you can smell the chocolate when you're biking. Okay, so that's where the church was.

It was right there. Gotcha. That's like Parkdale, I guess. Yeah. Isn't it? No. It's more Roncesvilles, but west, right? Okay.

No, east. But anyway, so. Like Soren, I know we're doing this. Sorenenity i never say that word right but serenity is that the word is anyways there's a but anyway i do know i think the closest intersection to that i think would be like dundas for sure and sterling and yeah i think you're right yeah except my my uh my memory of streets is because it's not there anymore right no i know where now they're yeah Now they're up on Bloor and Kipling. It's where my high school was before they tore it down. Michael Power.

Michael Power. That's where I went. Right. So, yeah, exactly. So, anyway, so that was my, we could always go there, right? And, you know, we had priests that actually were from the U.S. We had a priest from Chicago, a new ball. So they taught you how to play. and you always had older guys around, and so number one being Lithuanian was a

big part of me playing. Then we had Keele Street. It was the Keele Street schoolyard, and it was the greatest setup in the world, because on the south end, you had the school. And then towards the north end, there was a big field and then the court. But there was like three, the whole one side and the one baseline side were at the bottom of kind of a hill. It was like surrounded. And then the other side was a parking lot. But you actually were blocked somewhat from the wind. There was a streetlight above on the baseline side where where the hill you know a little slant and so you could play all day and into the night and so everybody yeah and everybody that was anybody

in toronto came to this keel street court and you could in my house where i grew up was literally you know 100 meters from there. I could be in my bedroom window, look out, see a ball going, boom, I'm down. And you could get a pickup game day or night in a hot 100-degree weather, in the rain. Heck, we played in the snow, believe it or not. We actually shoveled out the key, and we had a different rule. Like if you were on the fringe of the snow, anything goes.

But if you're in a key, you got to play straight up. It's fantastic. And this area, we'd call it maybe the junction? Is this what you call it? Well, the junction was just a little about, so I grew up at Kiel and Glen Lake, which is now Park Lithuania right there. Right, right. And junction is just above us.

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. I might be a little off but St. Cecilia's, that's a net? I went there too. A net and yeah. Yeah, like a net in Runnymede. We'll call it a little bit east of Runnymede off a net. You went there?

Yeah. So I went to Keele Street Public School, St. Cecilia's, James Cullinan and then St. Mike's. You were so close. I almost went to Runnymede. Yeah, St. Cecilia's, James Cullinan, then St. Mike's. You were so close because I actually was going... I almost went to Runnymede. Yeah, the high school or the grade school? High school. Okay.

Dwight Drummond went there. That's a fun fact. Mo Pellock, my guy. So, okay. So when you're balling like in Keele Street and at this time, does the legend of Leo begin? Because I mean, a lot of guys like Bill King, you kind of remember those times.

They'll talk about how there's this Canadian kid, Leo, who's got it. Did you know you had it? No, I saw a great quote, Bob Huggins, coach of West Virginia. He says the biggest problem with kids today is they don't play.

Go play pickup ball. You've got to wait to get in a game. If you lose, you've got to wait. You don't want to lose because you have to wait. You've got older guys saying, dude, what are you doing? You take that shot again, I'm going to slap you in the side of the head. That's what I grew up with. I'm the youngest guy there. I'm trying to get in every game.

And my brother says, no, you're not playing, dude. Get lost. He was eight years older than me, and my brother was really good. And this is George? Yeah, George. And George is like, normally you play at half court, right? Right. And my brother said, go down to court B, which was the other side that had no mesh.

He goes, go to court B, get lost. And he never let me play when he was there. But that drove me, right? Going, are you kidding me? I'm playing. But all my brother's friends always included me. They'd give me a ride. They'd take me.

And you've got to understand, like, I had a very – I could not allow my kids to do what I did. I'd have a really hard time. You've got to remember, so from the eighth grade on, I'm playing with men. In Lithuanian church, I'm playing with the men, you know. You're talking about, you know, there's a bottle of whiskey there at halftime. Okay, you're talking. You don't understand.

The environment's totally different, right? Right. I'm playing. I got a high school game. After the high school game, I'm going down to Arendale in Mississauga to play a men's league game. And where's my ride? My ride's going to the bar after the game right my bar ride

gets home when the bar closes right okay so now sometimes a fake id works other times i'm in the car till they're done right that's my ride yeah but that was my that was my growing up so like i'm hanging out with men and they're going they're doing all this and like i'm coming home on a school night at 1 32 o'clock in the morning and then i open up all my books on my desk make it look like i've been studying all night right my mom could barely wake me up in the morning but but that's i could not have done what i did without that yeah but now would i let my kids do that heck no it. It's true, man. Yeah, you're right. The stuff that we would do, because it's what you had to do,

we would never accept today. You're right. Yeah, and that's the way it was. But these guys were fantastic. They taught me how to play. They didn't take any crap. They slapped me around if I was an idiot. And you just learn how to play the game the right way. You learn how to respect the game.

You learn how to respect, you know, older guys. And there were a lot of guys that were models for me, like the way they played and how they played that I emulated. Gear Joyce, who writes for Sportsnet, and he's been on the show a couple of times, good friend of the show. Gear Joyce says, Leo would go to Florida in

spring break and hustle games pretending to be a mark. He says, per Lithuanian sources. Actually, I went to, you know, I didn't grow up with money so I went to spring break one time and I got sunstroke. I nearly died because I was playing

pickup ball on the beach in Fort Lauderdale. That's a hell of a way to go, though. Now, in Lithuania, speaking of that, okay, so tell me a little bit about, I hope I pronounced it right, Toronto-Ozra. Ausra. Ah, I knew I'd butcher it. Yeah, you had two teams that

were rivals. Actually, three. You had a Hamilton-Kovac, and then Toronto-Vitis, and Ausra. Now, okay, and then Toronto, Vitas, and Auschra. Now, okay, so my son is 17 now. And his good friend was the son of a gentleman named Alvin Kisonas. And Alvin was helping to coach this recently. That's why I know it's at Michael Power where you guys are playing.

Because until it conflicted with my son's hockey team, my son was playing with the Lithuanians. He was like an honorary Lithuanian. Can I tell you a Michael Power story real quick? Of course. Okay, so we could get into half the gyms in the city. We could sneak into all of them. And again, it's a different era, right?

So the locker rooms at Michael Power were street level. And so the last guy who we knew, Michael Power, we'd have him leave the window open. And we'd get into the locker room and go play. Now, this one Sunday, I'm coming back from church, right? St. Joan of Arc at West End. Yeah, Keel and Blair. Yeah, I'm coming back from church.

The Toronto Sun's got a picture of Wilt Chamberlain on the cover. He's in Toronto. And I'm going, man, holy crap, Wilt's here. So a buddy of mine and I, a teammate, we call him. This says he's at the Royal York Hotel. Like, what are the chances of getting through to him, right? Yeah. Call.

I'll say, hello? We got Wilt Chamberlain. All right. So we're sitting there going, hey, listen, Mr. chamberlain all right we're so we're sitting here going hey listen uh mr chamberlain uh you know leo routins uh my i played for jack donahue i remember jack donahue used to always talk about him so at this point this was 11th grade so i played for jack okay and uh yeah so this must have been my 12th going in my 12th grade and uh i'm going uh listen i know you're we saw you're in town i apologize for

bothering you but we're gonna be playing playing pickup ball if you want to come like nobody's gonna you know do anything stupid under you know but if you want to come get a run yeah i'd love to have you he goes amazing then he goes okay uh give me the address i go what are you serious right now he could have not written a word down didn't matter yeah uh so he takes the address we go thanks he goes okay maybe i'll see you later right and then uh so we're playing that afternoon at michael power and every time the door opened everybody's like everything stops and you look and then if you walked in and be ah it's you right but it was unbelievable like i'll never forget we did he ever show no oh but it was still it's funny earlier in the show we talked about how

like back in the day, you had to write the letter and hope they replied. But there is another route. There was another route in that one. If you try to call somebody... Call the newspaper, right? And the hotel would put the call through. Amazing.

Now you'd never say... If I tweet on a Raptor game, I'm not tweeting what hotel I'm at. I'm at a hotel, right? But here it was, pictured a paper. It said, hey, Royal York Hotel. And when you're Leo Reddins, you use a fake name anyways. Now, so we're talking about Michael Power.

The rival, of course, for Power was always St. Mike's. And this is where you were, right? Yeah, wasn't much of a rivalry. It depended on the sport. Actually, the whole TDC bill wasn't much of a rivalry. In football, Power held their own for sure. And in baseball, too. Very good baseball team.

But St. Mike's, of course, private school. So it wasn't even a real fair thing because you didn't have to pay to go to Power. Yeah, but back then St. Mike's was the Porter Schmoe School. Is that right? I mean, the tuition was $500. So it was the – St. Mike's at that time. Cause I could never have gone there. It was, it was the blue collar private school. Um, every kid played ball, every kid played sports and academics and the priests. I mean, it was no fooling around. You, you were there to go to class

and play sports, but you know what they were. I, again, I don't think I'm ever going to, my kids will never experience what I experienced. Because at St. Mike's, you could sneak through the priest residence. It was 24 hours because they lived there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I could go through the priest residence, come around through the cafeteria, hang off the balcony, drop into the gym. Wow. And play.

Like Spider-Man. That's amazing and and and we played we'd be there i'd be there at midnight i'd be there christmas day after church of course i don't want to make sure the priest do that but i wanted to play every day and good luck getting in a gym in this city it's so true right so? So here I am now. They knew what I was doing. They could see the lights on. They knew I was in the gym.

No one kicked me out. And they knew that the place, because when you exited, you could leave and everything could be shut like you were never there. So everything was left away, even exams. We'd literally come in here

with my guys. We'd move all the tables off a half court, play, put all the tables back like we weren't there. They probably only cared about one thing. I remember this from our school gym at Power. All they cared about is that you didn't have the shoes that scuffed them. That's it.

We had the sneaks, man. We were good. But it was unbelievable. I had a gym to go to anytime I pretty much wanted to. And all the guys are going out on a Friday night. I'm at St. Mike's, you know,

hooping. Amazing. Amazing. And so you're a teenager, you're at St. Mike's, but you're also playing on the national team, right?

You're the youngest guy to play for the Canadian national team. It's 16. Yeah. That's crazy too. Well, it was, it was funny cause there were the first camp. Well,

okay. I got cut. I get cut by the Ontario Junior Team. And back then it was 21 and under. It's not like now where you've got U16, 17, all that. It was 21 and under. Right. So I go to this camp, and I think I should be on a team. Like, I get cut, and I'm really pissed because I think I should be on this team. And anybody that cut me, I've got their names embedded in my head.

You're like Michael Jordan. When you make that speech, you're going to call out all the guys. Exactly. So I'm ticked. And then about six months later, I'm playing this all-star game in Buffalo. I get home about 2 o'clock in the morning. I actually got my first scholarship interest that night, Canisius in Buffalo, where my youngest son actually plays now.

Cool. Yeah, nice. And so my dad wakes me up at like 7 o'clock in the morning, right? And he goes, hey, you're going to go to the – there's an open national team tryout. Come on. Why am I going to go there? I got cut from a junior team. He goes, what do you got to lose? I said, Dad, seriously?

Come on. And I'm exhausted, right? He goes, okay, what are you going to do today? I'm going to play ball. Right? And normally it's like you get on the phone, you call everybody you know, you get a game, and you go play. He goes, well, good, everybody's there.

Let's go. Okay. He puts me in a car. And my dad's not the kind of guy to ever say you've got to go play. So this was a really weird thing. Right. That he would wake me up and say, you going right and uh so we get there and you know they make teams and so forth and we start playing and i've only i only played five minutes i think i had like a a steal a dunk a jumper this

like a good five minutes and then all of a a sudden, Jack Donnie gives me the finger, come over here, weighs me over, and I go, no. Same thing. Thanks for coming out. You're too young, you know, the whole bit. I heard this speech six months ago, right? And he goes, hey, I want to invite you to the national camp. I go, excuse me?

Like, I played for five minutes. And he gave me the invite. And you're 16? I'm 16. Unbelievable. And really from that point on, my life changed. And Jack Donahue was the most influential person because of that. And what he did was, and it's funny because they had two teams

they were going to have. A B team was going to go to Cuba. The A team was going to play in the Intercontinental Cup and travel all over Europe. And I remember calling him a few days before camp, and I said, Coach, what should I pack? I was 16 years old, right? Sure, yeah.

He goes, well, if you're just planning on going to Cuba, maybe you should stay home. I go, okay, all right. And then it gets crazy, because then we come to camp. There's two other high schoolers, Bo Pellick from Runnymede, who's my guy, and David Colthard from Tilsonburg. And so we're all there.

No, it wasn't David Colthard that was after. Anyway, Bo Pellick was there. So we have to introduce ourselves the night before camp starts. Everybody stands up, you know, this university, Leo Routon, St. Michael's High School, Toronto. You could just hear the guys, right? You hear the smirks. And the first morning, they put you on the floor. Everybody matches up.

Like they give you teams, right? But then you're just rotating and the guys just match up. First scrimmage, everybody's got me. Like they're fighting to see who's going to guard me. About mid-morning, and I could run, so if you're going to guard me back then, you better be in shape because I would fly. And about mid-morning, there was Jimmy Zoot,

the best center in Canada at the time, seven-footer. Jimmy was long, big. I came right down the middle, seven-footer. Jimmy was long, big. I came right down the middle of the lane. I threw it on Jimmy, right? Just dunked on him. And you could see everybody just kind of like, who is this kid? Right. And, you know, there's certain things that happen to you.

Like Michael Jordan always says, you know, you hit that shot, it changes life. That dunk was one of those events for me that I'm going, all right, okay. Because you started to believe you belong there. Yeah. And then from that point on, I was rolling. Yeah. And so that afternoon when we start the scrimmages, because you're doing three times a day,

I'm the last guy anybody's wanted matching up with. It was hilarious. I'm standing there, and all of a sudden, the guy's like, I guess I got him. And, I mean, you end up playing with the national team until 92. Is that right? Yeah, I mean, it was a brief respite when pros weren't eligible to play. So when I turned pro, I played from, what was it, 77 to 83 when I got drafted.

And then pros weren't eligible to play. So I came back again in 89, I think it was, when pros were eligible. And when they say pro, it doesn't matter, not just NBA. No, just NBA. Just NBA, gotcha. Yeah, which is really ridiculous because every guy in Europe's a pro. Right. But North America was the only one.

If it was NBA, you were out. So it was difficult. I remember Jack Donahue in the 84 Olympics. We had been building up, and we had a really good team, really good team. In 80, I think we would have medaled, but it was a boycott. And we tied with Puerto Rico. We won the pre-Olympic tournament. We're a really good team. And then, you know, in 82, we were one of the top teams in the world.

We destroyed the U.S. in the U.S. A lot of people don't know about that game. This isn't the Edmonton game in the World University Games. This is Knoxville, Tennessee, World's Fair. Canada's playing China, Yugoslavia, one of the top teams in the world, and the United States. We hammered all three of them, and we beat the U.S. 25 by 25. They had Doc Rivers, Mitchell Wiggins, Andrew's dad, Antoine Carr.

They had 12 first-round picks on that team. And actually, after the game, Dave Wall was a guy from Basketball USA, and they always had a little arrogance about him, right? And they gave us the game ball. The guy, he walked locker room game we all signed it sent it back man oh man okay before I get you to Minnesota here uh I want to give you some gifts for coming early on Victoria Day after a double overtime Raptors win here you are man so you you earned this man six pack of Great Lakes beer. Nice.

This is a fresh craft beer. They're great stuff. Yeah, I've had it before. It's excellent. I've seen you have it before because I've met that. That's right. The boot Park City.

I met you there. So yeah. Jack was there. So, you know, we had to have beer. I think I saw Jack a photo from the Great Lakes guys that Jack was taking home his own six packpack that night.

So although Jack's coming here to let people know, I think he wants more Great Lakes beer. I think that was it. But the funny thing, I don't think he knew I was sponsored by Great Lakes, and Jack and I were chatting, and Jack says, I'll come if you bring the beer. And I said, only done, buddy? That's a slam dunk.

It's easy to get Jack in a door. That's right. That's a slam dunk. It's easy to get Jack in a door. That's right. Now, again, they're a fiercely independent craft brewery located here in Etobicoke, even though I have trouble saying brewery. I'm told that's what they are. And I'm going to let you know, Leo and everybody listening, you'll probably,

Leo, you'll probably be on a beach somewhere. But on June 27th from 6pm to 9pm, TMLX3, that's Toronto Mic Listener Experience, the third one, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., TMLX3. That's Toronto Mic Listener Experience, the third one. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Royal Pains will play. I'm going to make some fun speeches. And of course, Lowest of the Low, one of my favorite bands of all time,

is going to play on the Great Lakes Brewery patio for my event. And it's also my birthday. And I want everybody to come out. We're going to have the lawns filled. We're going to have everybody out. I'm going to have the lawns filled. We're going to have everybody out. I'm going to have some gifts for everybody. The first beer is on the house. There's no cover, man.

This is a no-brainer, right? If you were in town, you'd be there. Sure, I'll be there. For sure. I don't know where I'll be, but I'll be there if I'm here. If you're in Toronto, you're there. So June 27th, TMLX3 at Great Lakes Brewery.

There is a lasagna for you from Palma Pasta. All right, love lasagna. They're the best. I call them Mississauga's best fresh pasta in Italian food. I'm a pasta dude. Well, dude, this is the best. Io giocavo palacanestro in Italia. I hope that was good stuff.

Che cazzo fa? I hope you didn't say anything negative. So if you go to palmapasta.com, you can find out where Palma Pasta is. They're fantastic partners of the show. They're helping to fuel the real talk love those guys love their food Mavis and Burnham Thorpe that's the nearest major intersection for Palmas

Kitchen which is like 10,000 square feet of like retail space and hot table it's amazing you have to go there for lunch and to bring home dinner so thank you palmapasta they're now on skip the dishes stickers Leo let's let me give you some more stickers here. So, courtesy of StickerU.com, we have, man, I can't wait to find out where this ends up.

Your very own Toronto Mike sticker. All right. Okay. I've been taking orders from people who want me to bike. I like to do a lunchtime bike ride like every day. Yeah. And I'm like, if I can bike to you, I will literally drop one of these in your mailbox. Like if you DM me on Twitter or email me your address, I will literally, you'll just find it when you come home from work or whatever.

There'll be a Toronto Mike sticker. So thank you, StickerU.com for the sticker. There's also a temporary tattoo. And because you're a Toronto guy, there's a nice Toronto artwork here from the Sticker you people. So if you want to make your own customized stickers, labels, decals, temporary tattoos, you can do it. And even iron-ons I saw. So anything you can stick basically.

You can order one or as many as you want. Go to stickeru.com to make your customized stickers. Okay. We all know you as a Syracuse guy. Fun fact. You went to Minnesota first. So tell me the story of how you end up at Minnesota, and then I'm dying to know how you end up at Syracuse.

Well, that's a long, long roundabout way. So at that time, Minnesota, you know, Big Ten was the conference. And remind me to tell you this Michigan State story, okay? Just remind me of that so I don't forget. So I ended up in Minnesota. I went there on a weekend. They played Purdue and Louisville. I remember Doctors of Dunk.

Darryl Griffin was there with Louisville. They had the largest on-campus arena at the time. It was great. I loved it. So go there. We had the best recruiting class in the country, number one. Trent Tucker, remember, played for New York Knicks. He was my teammate.

Kevin McHale was there. But it was kind of a banded program. You didn't have to go to class. You didn't have to. You just had to play ball, right? So I wanted something a little bit more. I didn't like the discipline with the team. The guys were doing whatever they wanted to do the whole bit.

So, I mean, I could have stayed there and in in some ways had, you know, it may be a very different career and it would have been good. But then there was this rule. Remember Larry Bird got drafted by the Celtics and then he went back to Indiana State and they had until the next draft to sign him. Right. So I go, you know what? If I leave, I could get drafted twice. How bad is that? So I decide I'm going to make the move and transfer. Nobody could figure out why I was leaving. Everybody was upset about it.

So I go, they changed the rule a year later. I go, you've got to be kidding me. So then I went to Marshall. It came down to Syracuse and Marshall. And nobody could figure that one out. But Stu Aberdeen, Canadian, he was an assistant coach. He was the head coach there. But he was an assistant at Tennessee when they had Ernie and Bernie show.

And he was a big recruiter. And, you know, I really liked Stu. And I had all the confidence in the world that Stu was going to build a great program. And, you know, when you're transferring, you want to know it to know, it's like, this was going to be my program, right? This was me. And I felt really good about it. And crazy story, Bernie Fine, assistant coach at Syracuse, he's recruiting me. So now he thinks I'm going to Syracuse twice. Right. And I have to tell him I'm going to Marshall. And so he gets, he drives from Syracuse to Toronto in three hours flat, which you can't do.

And we're sitting, we're actually, we met at St. Mike's, and he likes to play tennis. He says, I'm trying to ease into this conversation. We'll bang the tennis ball back and forth. So we start talking about it, and then he says, what about Stu's health? I go, are you serious, man? Like, he recruited me.

Like, Bernie was one of the best guys recruiting, right? And I go, are you serious, man? Like, he recruited me. Like, Bernie was one of the best guys recruiting, right? And I go, are you telling me so? Stu Aberdeen had a health issue, a heart condition. Are you telling me I'm going to go to a martial? Guy's going to die? Seriously, come on. Who does that? He was dead three weeks later.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Jack, we were coming back from Italy with a Canadian team. We were in Kennedy. And Jack Donahue pulled me aside. He had picked up the New York Post or whatever, and he said that, and I said, wow. So at that point, I'm going, you know what?

Screw college. I'm going to Europe. Because I had offers already from my time playing for Canada. Right. And I'm going to Europe. And I came home. Syracuse was already on the phone. And I'm telling my dad.

My dad's going, well, do what you want to do, right? But then as I'm talking more about it, my dad's like, what are you, an idiot? Like, seriously, you're going to school. And then, I mean, really unfortunate that Syracuse was still in it. But you want to talk about a small world. Bob Zaffalato, who was director of player personnel for the Toronto Raptors from day one when they started, became the head coach of Marshall.

And what they did is they followed me around. We went to Puerto Rico for the Pan Am Games. It was a joke on our team. There was a van behind their team bus with the Marshall coaching staff. They followed me. We started off in Ottawa. We went to Florida. We went to the Dominican, and we went to Puerto Rico.

There was a van behind our bus the whole time. And finally, Jack Donahue, I said, look, I went to Marshall for one reason, and that was Stu Avery you know i i went to marshall for one reason and that was stew avery uh i wasn't going to go there for another reason and i end up at syracuse and you end up at syracuse so you're yeah syracuse you averaged 12.1 points five assists 6.2 rebounds you're the first player ever to record a triple double in big east play you did that twice in the span of a month during your senior year you were were named. Should have had about 15 of them. I missed like by one board or one assist. You were named with the All-Big East third team and honorable mention All-American that year.

So, by the way, Wes, a really quick question from Wes, who listens to the show. Do Syracuse rivalries feel the same not being in the Big East anymore? Yeah, I mean, I lost interest in the Big East a while ago. When the Big East expanded and you had Marquette and all these DePaul, everybody in the Big East, and you weren't doing the home and away. Andy, my son, was playing at the time, and I'm like, come on. These aren't Big East.

I mean, when you're not doing the home and away with Georgetown, St. John's, Villanova, it's not the Big East. You're talking about – and the funny thing is when I went to syracuse there was no big east i signed with syracuse and i liked the fact that it was a really good academics that's one of the things i wanted and it was close to home and they were a really good program i like their style they get up and down the floor and this and that there was no. I sign, and from the time I sign, now you get a red shirt, and I play my first game, there's a Big East. And not only is it a Big East, but it's the best conference in the freaking country.

It was unbelievable. It just exploded. Yeah. And then there was no Carrier Dome when I signed with Syracuse. Think about it. They were playing at Manly Fieldhouse with 9,000 people, and it was sold out every game. At one point, they had a 56-game winning streak or something like that, 55. Think about it. They were playing at Manly Fieldhouse with 9,000 people, and it was sold out every game.

At one point they had a 56-game winning streak or something like that, 55. And my first game, all of a sudden we're in the Dome. And they were saying, okay, well, maybe if you get 16,000, 17,000 people, it'll be okay. Senior year, inter-squad scrimmage, 27,000. That's insane, yeah. Yeah yeah and we were setting a national attendance record every week my senior year it was nuts now before i get you drafted uh you mentioned michigan state there's a story there so we're playing my freshman year we're playing michigan state and

they had uh you know magic johnson gregoryster, they won the national championship that year. And we're up big at state. And I'm coming down. I got the ball on the right-hand side of half court, and I'm ahead of everybody. And I'm just running to get there. And I got Magic chasing me and Gregory Kelster. And Kelster could fly. And they're coming.

I'm looking at them. They're coming. So I'm going to go up and get it high in the glass. I'm up there, and I go, ah, screw it. And I go, boom! And I dunk it, right? And Kelser and Magic both try to block it. We all, I get knocked down, right?

But I dunk it at, it's in East Lansing. And I go down on the floor, and the place, you could hear a pin drop, right? Like, who's this white dude that just did that, right? And the funny thing is, my dad and a buddy, Vic Simkus from high school, he was there. And they're both standing there like this. I look up at them, and you couldn't hear anything. So listen, so what happens now, 25 years later,

I have no record of that. Dick Vitale, my rookie year, we're doing san antonio sixers like hall of fame game on espn and dick vital tells the story he did the game it was the big 10 game in a week he did the game that's it that's the only proof that this happened so i call michigan state yeah and judd heathco head coach of michigan state recruited me to be in the backcourt with magic johnson that year that would have been my their championship year would have been my freshman year wow I didn't believe him you're not playing two six eight guys in the backcourt together it's not happening

so I make this phone call I call Tom Izzle I'm speaking to him and he goes Leo Rounds wait a minute Judd Heathcote always talks about hang on a minute because I was looking for the video right I figured they would have it right game of the week Judd gets on the always talks about it. Hang on a minute, because I was looking for the video, right? I figured they would have it, that game of the week. Judd gets on the phone. He had this big, booming voice, right? He'd go, Leo Routens, oh, my gosh, I tell everybody, we won the national championship, but if we had you, we would have been. I go, Judd, seriously, like, you're not serious, are you?

Because, yeah, I tell. I go, like, I want to cry. Like, I didn't believe you right i didn't believe a word he was saying i thought it was just this recruiting pitch right you're not playing leo and magic together right and he was serious that's incredible that's amazing that's amazing um okay wait so in i was gonna say before you mentioned that story about finding the footage and stuff like i sometimes uh on, you'll tweet like these. They're like Zapruder films stills.

Okay. I'm like, I think that's Leo. It's like pictures like somebody took it from like a potato camera or something like that. But it's kind of a darn shame you don't have like what they have today, which is 100 angles, HD footage of everything. You know what's amazing? NBA today. If you play in the NBA,

every shot you've ever made, everything's recorded, right? I have more of me in the NBA than the NBA does. Okay. Seriously. And it took forever to get it, right? I have more of me from Canada than Canada does.

Because you're the official Leo Rodin's archivist. No, but what I did was I made this video. I made an instructional video, and they needed clips, and also I thought for my kids it'd be cool. And when I say I have more, it's not like I have a lot.

It's minimal. You're talking, if you add it all up, I got nine minutes of video. The nine-minute career of Leo Roudin's. Yeah, but it's great, because there was no records, right? Yeah, and nobody kept it. You're right. So sometimes I want to see pictures of Leo Roudin. Yeah, but it's great because there was no records, right? Yeah. Nothing. Nobody kept it. You're right.

And so sometimes I want to see pictures of Leo dunking, for example. Me too. Because I heard rumors it happened. But there is some evidence. I want to tell the listeners, of course, there are some shots of you dunking. But not as, man, today,

if some guy played for Syracuse and, I don't know, dunked twice. And a white dude, no less. Right, right, right. I always think, who's the guy from Duke in the early 90s who would dunk? Who played above the rim and would dunk?

I don't know. I remember Danny Brains and Tom Chambers and those guys. Yeah, they'll come to me later. Okay, so 1983. You're the first Canadian ever drafted in the first round of the NBA draft. You're the first. Something we now kind of, I got to say, now we take it a bit for granted.

Like it's lost a bit of its allure because it's happening so frequently. But you were number one. Amazing. Yeah, yeah. And I was. This is your chance to gloat a little bit here. No, it's pretty amazing. That's what I work for, right?

It's what I wanted to do. And it's funny. I was, the draft, the whole drafting was kind of funny because now you go through all these steps, right? It's like all the process. Right.

And we played the Aloha Classic in Hawaii, which was top 32 seniors in the country. And remember, underclassmen were, they could impact the draft but not like today but there were a few guys that would come in that wouldn't be in hawaii so we play in hawaii and my stock kind of held its stock right everybody said i'm somewhere around the middle of the first round and i held my stock maybe you know showed i could move up a little bit right and then um the night before the draft the six Sixers want to do a physical.

So I go to the Syracuse airport. This is the biggest day of my life, right? I get to the airport. I look up. It says, flight to Philadelphia canceled. I go, what are you doing? What are you doing? I got to go.

And you don't have cell phones at the time, right? So I got to run to a pay phone. I got to call my agent. He goes, OK, just find any way to get there. So they routed me through. I don't even know where I went to. to a pay phone. I got to call my agent. He goes, okay, just find any way to get there. So they routed me through. I don't even know where I went to. Eventually, I get there. I love plane trains and automobiles.

You rent a truck. You rent a car. There was no time. I could have drove, but there was no time at this point. So I end up getting there. And the physical, I go in there. Doc's like, yeah, rubs my knee. Yeah, you're good.

That's your physical. No x-rays, no MRIs. Times have changed. Now they would do psychological analysis on you. Exactly. They give you ink blots, and I'd be asking you, what do you see in the ink blots? Oh, everything.

Then I go into this meeting, and you've got everybody. You've got Billy Cunningham, the head coach, Jack McMahon, a head scout, Matty Gukas, assistant coach, the owner, Harold Katz, Pat Williams, the GM. Everybody's in this room. And they ask me these questions for about an hour and a half, right Williams, the GM, everybody's in this room. And they asked me these questions for about an hour and a half, right? And I thought I did a pretty good job. I thought it was a pretty good job. So I pretty much got an idea that, oh, and then, but the team

I wanted was the Celtics. I always wanted to be a Celtic. Unfortunately, you had 23 teams in the league. They had the last pick of the first round. I meet my agent at the Philadelphia airport on the way home, and he says he's talking to Red Auerbach, and they want to move up, but they don't know if they can. Right. Now here's the crazy thing. The year before, in the Big East tournament, in Hartford, Connecticut, we're playing Boston College.

And I had surgery on my knee, and I missed a segment, so I'm coming back from surgery on my knee and I and I missed a segment so I'm coming back from surgery on my knee and I have I don't like I don't know 20 points 14 rebounds 10 assists I don't know something around those numbers and Red Auerbach's at the game sitting with Jack Donahue we lose the game at the buzzer to Boston College and it must have been a good game I made all tournament in a three team three game tournament in one game yeah yeah and red was at the game and he said he told jack don if leo comes out i'll take him so i'm going wow like i had surgery on my knee and i got my concerns for the future but they're they're same thing they would be like the last pick of the first round or or a runner about

that so there's a risk because there's no promises. There's nothing on paper. Right. And if you come out and they don't take you, you know, so I decide I'm going to go back to school. And so now, you know, I meet him and he says, Red Auerbach, you know, they'd like to take you. And so now that it came down, I knew it was going to be Danny Ferry at Washington.

He was the GM. That would be the 10th pick. Portland at 15. San Antonio at 19. The Sixers at 17. And it ended up being Jeff Malone went to Washington at 10. And Clyde Drexler went to Portland at 15. Now, if Clyde was available, Philly would have taken him.

Right. So I knew that was in play. And then John Paxton ended up going to San Antonio, which would have been a perfect team style-wise for me. That would have been a... But that's how it all played out. And okay, so firstly, I want to know, do you have your basketball cards?

I got a couple. People send them to you. Okay. I think they're... I Spurge. I think they're about 14 cents. I was going to say, like,

if you see one available, because they'll pop up, right, on whatever, eBay or whatever. Do you ever buy your own card? No, I probably have about,

I probably have like four or five of each one. That's it. Now, okay, so people who know your NBA career know it. Unfortunately, I guess injuries. I had some bad luck.

I physically uh um I don't really even I've I've already had three four surgeries on my knee prior to the NBA right and my my body just started deteriorating and you got to remember the NBA was a lot different um if you're a first round pick uh you're taken care of physically. I mean, there's, you know, um, and I, I had a real, I got my knee hit. Um, and then I came down to Bobby Jones's foot, like the third game, third day of the season. And, uh, I, I tore my ankle badly. Um, but basically you're going to play, right? So I play, right. And I'm, I'm, it's bad. Two months go by. I'm hopping to the bathroom in the morning. That's how bad it is.

I got a grapefruit in the side of my ankle. Oh, man. And finally, I tell my agent, I should have done this sooner. I tell him I can't do this anymore. So he sends me another doctor. Well, all the lateral ligaments on my ankle are torn. And I've been playing two months. And now I have a stress fracture.

So basically, my whole rookie year was toast because of that. And, you know, back then it wasn't like, okay, you're an investment. Well, now you're injury prone. And now you're fighting to stay in the league. And then I got traded to Indiana, which I thought was, okay, I'm going to go to Indiana. I'm going to start. And actually you want to hear a funny story?

Pat Williams, general manager of the Sixers. We used to have a joke. If you see Pat Williams walking towards you, walk the other way because he can't trade you if he can't talk to you. That sounds like a Seinfeld episode. Exactly. Well, it kind of is because, and here's where it becomes Seinfeld. So Mark McNamara, one of our centers at the Sixers,

my rookie year, we're walking off the court after a shoot-around, and you go in the tunnel. We see Pat Williams to our right, so we turn left to start walking as fast as we can left, right? All of a sudden, he goes, Mark, Mark. Guess what? He got traded to San Antonio and was playing in San Antonio that night. So I get to – I'm at Philly.

I'm at St. Joe's. We used to work out down there. And I'm at the gym. All of a sudden, the guy at the gym, because remember, there's no cell phones, right? The guy at the gym says, Leo, you got a phone call from Pat Williams. I go, ah! So I get traded in the end. I'm thinking, this is good, right?

I'm going to go to the end and start. So I get traded at the end. I'm thinking, this is good, right? I'm going to go to the end and start. And I get there. Within 24 hours, I'm going, something's wrong. Like, they don't, you know. They're not treating you like you're one of theirs. No, I'm not.

Yeah, and we didn't even have a scrimmage, and I got cut. I'm going, wait a minute. I called Phil Jasner, who was with the Philadelphia Inquirer. I said, because even my agent my agent called me says you're gonna get cut today i said what do you mean gonna get cut today we haven't done anything yet right and he goes it's money i go what so i call phil jasner said phil tell me what happened he goes i i don't i have no idea this is crazy so what happened was i became i was we had charles but i I always tell Charles Barkley he owes me money.

Because we had three first round picks that year and Charles was one of them. Yeah. So they had to move me to sign Charles. Right. Right. So now I'm on Indiana's salary cap. Now Philly's still got to pay me. Because my contract was like, I got cut. Right.

So you essentially, you're traded from Philly so that they can make room for Barkley. Right. And that's the salary cap. Exactly. And there was no other part to the trade now and that was the weird part all of a sudden in january or something george johnson goes from indiana to philly no exchanges and that was the completion and like i was so angry yeah i had a i didn't even want to wait for a flight i went to the pacer's and said i want a rental car

i want to leave now i like you i want to leave now i want to get the a flight. I went to the pacer's and said, I want a rental car. I want to leave now. I was like, I want to leave now. I want to get the hell out of here. And I'm driving in a car back to, I had a place in Philly. And I'm going like, what just happened? Like my career, like where did it go? And then I went back to Syracuse and I was there and all of a sudden the Atlanta Hawks call. My agent says, the Atlanta Hawks want you to come in.

I go like, yeah, it's garbage. This is another, like, seriously, right? And I was a gym rat. I had to be in the gym every day. I didn't touch a ball for 10 days. I was so, I've never done that. I was so upset about this Indiana thing. And so I go, okay, well, I'll go to Atlanta, I guess. So I go to Atlanta, I get there, and I play really well, right? And we actually have an exhibition game in Toronto. We're playing the Detroit Pistons. Now, here I am, but I'll never forget that day.

So I'm in the hotel. I sat there, stared out the window the whole day. This is my one time. This is my dream. An NBA game. I'm an NBA player in Toronto. Right. I don't even know if this dude's going to play me.

Like I was sitting there, like I sat in a hotel, just staring out the window going, man. Is this Maple Leaf Gardens you're going to play? Yeah. Yeah, and Isaiah Thomas, Kelly Trapuka, all these guys. And the whole night just seemed to kind of play out because Kelly Trapuka and I played in the Jersey Shore League that summer together.

And so the game, we're getting ready for the game. They're introducing starting lineups on Kelly Trapuka's, like, waving the flag. It's a big deal. So these funny things are going on. I had played against Isaiah, too, with the national team, with the U.S. team team so i knew all these guys and uh all of a sudden i play and i had like we win i had like 16 16 something like that yeah good it was a good game so i'm feeling pretty good and i go to mike fratello who's the coach and he talked about uh you know finding me a place right

you know to let us in a hotel and i said to him i said after the game say mike uh you know is there any chance uh i really want to kind of get settled you know yeah and he goes yeah yeah yeah so we get back i think it was the next day they said hey come by the office i go oh yeah yeah i walk in and you had uh the gm stan caston uh ronnie rostein who's with the Miami Heat later on, Mike Fratello, and I forget the other guys. And as soon as I walk in a room, I go, this is not good. And when it starts out, hey, you belong in this league. Just not here.

Not here. And you know what they did? They moved Dominique Wilkins because of injuries to the two guard. Well, they didn't last, right? But that's where they moved him. Well, guess of injuries to the two guard well they didn't last right but that's where they moved them well guess where i was so right me or dominique come on it's close call in my opinion but there was another one man it's like there was a flight like an hour late like a in two hours and there's one an hour so i want out now because when you're not wanted you don't want to be there like no but the crazy thing was and i and i played well i and i just kind of went in and was screw it i'll and i and i played well i and i just kind of went in

and was screw it i'll just play and i played well and uh um yeah unfortunately and then from that point on i just said you know uh what do you do you know so i end up uh going to europe and that was it played over there so you you bounced around some pro teams in europe and let's get you here because there's a good chunk here I want to do. And I know you can't spend all day here. You have things you got to do. But I want to get you to the Raptors here. So let me play.

This is the very bad audio. I played this for Michael Grange, actually. And it's pretty bad audio. But this is the first points ever by the Toronto Raptors. Inside for Tabak. Alvin Robertson for three. There is the first ever basket scored by a Toronto Raptor. I'll see if I can boost that later, but that's of course Alvin Robertson with his three,

and that's the first Raptor game. So how do you end up as a Raptors commenter basically for day one? Well, it's kind of funny. Okay, so because of all the injuries I had, now one, I studied broadcast journalism in school. That's kind of a, I tell kids when I speak to them, I say, in ninth grade, like I hate math. Like when I say I hate math, numbers scare me.

If it's a double-digit lead lead I don't know what the score is John Saunders and I used to do games and we were doing games on ESPN and I'd say you know the Vikings are down big John he goes yeah how much are they down by I said big

well how much because he knows I can't give you that number John Saundners was great right he was amazing he's uh you know i miss him uh i miss him every day john was uh phenomenal and uh many lessons life lessons and uh and just a best friend and unbelievable broadcaster but um so we uh where was i going we're uh going to the raptors in 95. Yeah, oh, so that's what I studied. And because of all my injuries, well, in ninth grade, I told my high school coach, I said, okay, what can I do?

No math. I like talking. I like writing. I like people like this. And it didn't make sense to me to have a career. I knew I was going to be an NBA player. I was going to be an NBA player. I didn't want to be a chemistry major and have nothing connected to what I'm doing.

So I wanted to have a career that's connected. So, I mean, people know who you are, this and that. I want to connect the two. And so broadcast journalism was kind of the answer. So I did that. And then because of all the injuries I had, when I was injured, I did a CBC Olympics radio. I did color for Syracuse. I wrote for the Corriere dello Sport in Italy.

Whenever I was playing, I was still doing whatever I could. Right. Because the best advice I ever got, and I tell kids this, that I had a professor my senior year at Syracuse, and he said, your degree doesn't mean, that I had a professor my senior year at Syracuse, and he said, your degree doesn't mean anything. You need a resume. Not later on. When you finish school, you need a resume. And so I never forgot that. And what I did was I built up this resume. So finally, the Raptors are here. And Isaiah Thomas Thomas was the GM Brendan Malone was my assistant coach at Syracuse was the head coach and I so I connected with everybody I knew them and I said hey you know and uh I sent in my my stuff and they they had about a thousand videotapes for my job the job

in it I wanted right but I had one advantage. There was only one Canadian that played in the NBA that had a video tape. I was going to say several advantages probably, but that's a key one. You're a Toronto guy. You played in the NBA, first round pick. You played in the NBA. Let's face it. And I had a resume. And you were a handsome guy. That's got to count for something. I had a resume. And you were a handsome guy. That's got to count for something, right? I mean, I had a resume. And you had a resume. I mean, the timing couldn't have been better.

And I never thought that my first NBA, like I said, I thought I always wanted to play in the NBA. And Ted Stepien of the Cleveland Cavaliers kept talking about buying a team and bringing it to Toronto. And I kept thinking, I'll get to the NBA here. But I didn't know it would be as a broadcaster. Perfect storm. Perfect storm.

So 95, we got a team. You're there day one. Let's let Milan. So Milan is with Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. He's got a better voice than me. So let's let him ask this next question. Hey,

Toronto Mike. It's Milan from Fast Time Watch and Jewelry Repair. Hello, Mr. Routens. Big fan of yours since I started listening to your basketball insight with Storm and Norman Rumak years ago on the fan.

Great for Raptor fans to have a load management day after such an emotional game Sunday night. Two part question. One, as someone who has been with the Raptors broadcast since day one, dating back to the days of the new VR, have you seen the perception of NBA players change when it comes to playing in Toronto?

And two, last week on the Primetime Sports Roundtable, Paul Jones mentioned his disappointment, specifically regarding the Canadian hockey media's lack of respect in acknowledging the success of the Raptors. Wondering your thoughts on this. Thanks, Leo and Toronto Mike. Good questions. People forget the new VR had the games.

Well, that's when, like I said, when John Saunders was there, and it was kind of cool. We didn't have to wear ties. You could wear a T-shirt and a jacket. It had kind of a cool look, and like I said, working with John Saunders was uh

phenomenal and then rod black on the network games at ctv who we heard yeah we heard him in that clip yeah i remember that first game on there do you miss rod black's mustache be honest yes i do too i mean nothing like having a porn porn mustache on network tv i think it worked for him but the further we get from milan's question the more likely I will be to forget them both. So do you remember them still? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I think perception of players, you know what?

That's been, in my opinion, a fabricated idea thrown out by opposing teams, agents, people that try to discredit Toronto. Players love Toronto. And if you have a good team, you will have players in Toronto. If you have a crappy team, you're not going to get all the best players, right? So players love being here. Players love the dynamics of the city, the multicultural aspect of the city.

It's a New York City, you know, here in Canada. And players love it. And you talk about the weather all you want. 90% of the NBA cities have the same crappy weather, right? Yeah, it's not like Chicago didn't have, you know, it's not like Chicago's got palm trees or whatever. Exactly, or New York. I mean, everybody talks about the All-Star game in Toronto when it was brutal.

The year before New York was just as bad. Right. So, I mean, come on. But that's the U.S. media, and everybody creates this thing, and it makes no sense. But players love it here. So I think the perception is. But that's the U.S. media, and everybody creates this thing, and it makes no sense. But players love it here, so I think the perception is that it's a great place. It's a great organization.

Yep. The gentleman, you mentioned him because he owes you money, but I heard Charles Barkley last night. Charles loves it. To paraphrase, something to the effect of, well, he loves Toronto, and he calls it the best-kept secret that Toronto is the best city in the world. Yeah, no, Charles loves Toronto, and it's like, he calls it the best kept secret, that Toronto is the best city, like, in the world.

Yeah, no, Charles spends a lot of time here. He's good buddies with Rod and myself, and, you know, we hang out, and he's, Charles loves it. He absolutely loves Toronto. My wife went to Vegas with Charles. How about that one? She's a big boxing fan.

Mayweather, that fight was coming up. Oh, yeah, of course. So we were having dinner, and we said, yeah, we'd love to go to the fight, because Charles always goes to the fight. He's a big Vegas fan. Mayweather, that fight was coming up. Oh yeah, of course. So we were having dinner and we said, well, we'd love to go to the fight because Charles always goes to the fight. He's a big Vegas guy. So we said, we'll do it. Well, I was busy. I couldn't go. So Charles took my wife and her friend. Amazing. Hooked them up at the hotel, got them tickets to the fight, the whole bit. I always like Barkley because I was a big Public Enemy fan. And there was a line in the first album, You'll Bum Rush the Show. Chuck D does it does it i think the line goes i'll throw it down your throat like barclay barclay and it

was in grade school at the time and i'm like and then i just dive in and you're like this is my kind of guy i just like you know what he's uh what people don't know about him he's a wonderful human being you're talking about a guy with a big heart um he he cares uh i've never been out with him where he doesn't acknowledge everybody uh anybody comes up to him he'll he'll buy you a drink you'll shake your hand let me ask you this would charles barkley come down here into the dungeon and do that but they're trying to you know what you never you never know because he's the he's the kind of guy that he surprises you he does things uh like I said, one of the most generous people and not a guy that's being generous for show.

He's just a good human being and funny. And he's one of the funniest guys. And every time we get together, I get a stomachache. We're laughing so hard. Maybe I'll get your wife to ask Charles for me. That's my key in there. Now, the second part was Paul Jones made a comment about Canada's big, the whole, the hockey analysts,

and he felt they weren't giving the respect to the Raptors, something to that effect. I don't know. I don't get involved in that. I mean, you're a hockey guy. Talk hockey. If I'm, you know, basketball guys talk basketball. For me, it's, you know what?

I love this city. And there was nobody more excited when they had the Leafs and the Raptors going in the playoffs. I want them all to win. I mean, it's great for this city. The city just, we're all, even today, and there was nobody more excited when they had the Leafs and the Raptors going in the playoffs. I want them all to win. I mean, it's great for the city. The city just, we're all, even today, because if we had lost that game in double overtime,

I can tell you, I know how my mood would be this morning. In Toronto, the mood is different. Oh, how about that mood after that Game 7 winner last week? I couldn't go anywhere. I couldn't go anywhere. Everyone's smiling. I know. It's a wonderful thing. To me, all that stuff's petty, man.

It's like, you know what? We should all be excited about the good things happening for the city. Now, so your deal. I'm going to think so. New VR back in the day. But nowadays, of course, 37.5% of the Raptors is owned by Bell Media.

Bell, I should say. And then 37.5% is owned by Rogers. So bell i should say and then 35 7.5 percent is owned by rogers so we have this like uh we take turns like this game's on tsn this game's on sportsnet and we're kind of at this point we're used to the fact that like if the game's on tsn we're gonna see jack armstrong and if it's on sportsnet we're not gonna see jack and we know eric smith you know we know he's a rogers guy he doesn't do the tsn and we we now kind of, all of us Raptor fans, know who belongs to who. But Matt and you, I'm going to talk about you specifically because you're you, FYI. So what the hell is your deal?

How is it that you get to do all the games? How is that deal? I don't know. I'm just thrilled that that's the way it is. Obviously, Jack calls the TSN. I call the Sportsnet. And when Jack's calls the TSN. I call the Sportsnet. And when Jack's calling the TSN, I'm the studio guy.

Right. And so, you know, I don't know. I'm happy it's that way. I'm thrilled that I can, I can do what I do on both sides of it. And,

and I'm, I'm just privileged and honored that I got to, to wonderful employers that make it happen. You know what? I'm happy for you. And it makes sense for both sides. I mean, Matt Devlin calls both sides, too. So he's got it going on, too.

And does Paul Jones do both sides, too? Or Radio 1? Paul and Sherm. Yeah, everybody kind of does a little bit of both. And then you have also the NBA TV stuff, which overlaps with both. Right. Yeah, it's kind of an interesting dynamic. And like you said, I think what's happening now is that people kind of identify with the different guys we have.

So maybe it's a good thing that you don't get too much of anybody where it's kind of a freshness, you know? Well, you're going to be compared to Jack because you're beside Matt for a Sportsnet game. And then Jack's beside him. Now, Jack has, I would say, first of all, he's great. But he has catchphrases, I would say. And he's going to do like a, get that garbage out of here and stuff like that. I'm not going to call it gimmicky, but he's got a shtick. Yeah, he's got a shtick.

We're different. And I respect what Jack does. He's got his thing. And I call the game. For me, it's about the game. we're different like i uh and i respect what jack does he's got his thing and uh i call the game uh for me it's it's about the game no one told you to come up with a catchphrase and where's the leo yeah and people say that too i got no i'm not i'm not and i'm not gonna sing and i'm not gonna do that so i just kind of do my own thing and uh um like to me it's about the game right but here's a little tip on the uh the jack the Jack thing, which I'm going to have Jack on.

I'm a big fan of Jack. I'm a big fan of yours. But one of the things I'll say when your team is winning, the Jack thing is great. Like it's like, oh, that's fun and great. But when your team is struggling, the Jack thing, uh, isn't as fun for the listener and the viewer, like the whole, the singing and the, the, the get the garbage and all that. It's wonderful when you're up. Well, yeah, but you know what?

Everything is wonderful when you're winning. Cause that you got always, cause I'll tell you what you It's wonderful when you're up. Well, yeah, but you know what? Everything is wonderful when you're winning. That's right. Because I'll tell you what, when you're doing bad basketball, you're earning your keep. Trust me. And we had a lot of bad basketball over the years. When you're winning, it's fun.

Fans are happier. People like on Twitter are happier. When you're winning, it's just good. When you're losing and it can get ugly, and that's where you have, quite honestly, you look at, we're the home broadcast, right? Yeah. And you walk that fine line of trying to call the game,

and when you're losing, you don't want to trash it. When you're winning, you don't want to go. It's that fine line you kind of always walk, but winning just sure makes everything sweeter. No, damn straight. You're so right, Leo. And Ridley Funeral Home. That's the...

They're on Twitter. Ridley Funeral Home. Hopefully we don't need their services. Unfortunately, I'm aware of their services. And I don't mean to add a bad way to them, but I'm aware. It's one of those businesses, and they're not a sponsor,

but maybe they should be. But it's one of those businesses where you hope you never need them, but inevitably you do need them. Okay, so they said... And I'm getting closer to needing them than not. By the way, speaking of Jack, one of my favorite fun facts, Jack and you are both great, but you're older than Jack Armstrong. I'll tell you a story, and I don't know if Jack remembers this.

When he was turning 40, he was saying, hey, you're going to come to my party. I said, yeah, how old are you? He said, 40. I said, come on, Jack, seriously, how old are you? No, I'm 40. Come on, Jack, stop messing around. Just tell me how old, because I was 43.

I go, there's no way this dude is 40. Like that time, I thought he was, you know. 60. Yeah, so it's just kind of funny. So there, uh, when people end up finding out that our ages, they like,

nah, but you can win a lot of bar bets with that. I've been using it. Like, uh, who do you think is older? Jack Armstrong? Well,

of course, Jack Armstrong's older. Cause they're, and this is no disrespect to Jack. No, none at all. It's genetics and stuff, right?

It's how you, if you see my mom, when my mom was 75, he'd swear she was 50. There you go. So I'm a knock on wood. But yeah, so that's a fun fact that Jack is younger than Leo.

Where the hell was I going? Oh yeah, Ridley Funeral Home. They say about you, Leo, he is so positive all the time, which is so refreshing in this time we live in. How does he stay so positive around all the negativity we all have our ways of dealing with things we'd love to know his thanks and looking forward to listening how your glasses kind of have full you seem at least uh

the persona you present uh very positive uh does that come naturally to you or is it something you work at you know what my my i mentioned my my parents um you know coming from lithuania losing everything they have watching their family slaughtered uh all that and i've never heard them complain whine make excuses you work you do your thing you know your positive outlook on everything um why can't you do it you know that was the response you know like my dad getting me up to go to the national team you know everything was uh you know why can't you do it? You know, that was the response. You know, like my dad getting me up to go to the national team. You know, everything was, you know, why can't you do it? I was telling people I want to play in the NBA,

and a Canadian kid in Toronto wanted to play in the NBA. People said, what are you, nuts? And my parents said, you know, sure, do it. You know, so I think it's how you're raised. And, you know, I try to – it's like the coffee thing. I don't even know how that started, but it's the idea being that if one person sees that and it helps them or makes their day,

then it's worth doing, right? Even if it's one person. So I just prefer to live that way. I prefer to see the bright side of things than the dark side of things. Good for you. Now, here's a fun side of things, I think. I want to bring back an incident

that happened with... Of course, Drake's always courtside. Fine, we'll talk about Drake, but this is not Drake. I think we're in Washington here, but do you remember this? Hold on here. 65-57.

I'm going to have to text him right now. You should. What's up? Right here. What's up? Hey, saying hey. 72-65. There he is right there.

72-65. We'll talk to him. We'll talk to him after the third quarter. So this is Wale. Don't call him Wale because you'll think to call call him whale, W-A-L-E, but this is Wale. And I'll put a bit of him on just to play a bit of him

and then we'll talk about that here. This is called My PYT. A little homage to Michael Jackson. So Wale. Okay, so tell us a little bit about that interaction with Wale on the broadcast. I'll bring this down. First of all, so tell us a little bit about that interaction with Wally on the broadcast. I'll bring this down.

First of all, so we're sitting there, and we get some misinformation. I'm not up on all the rappers. I've never heard of this dude. So I know, obviously, Drake's our guy, right? So you hear this. Somebody in our ear tells us. I won't say who, but somebody in our ear tells us. He was talking to Rudy Gay during the game on our team, Raptors,

and this guy says he's talking trash to Rudy Gay. Well, who is he? Some local rapper. Right. Okay, local guy. Well, and it turns out he wasn't talking trash. Rudy and him are buddies. Right.

Turns out he's not just a local rapper. He's a big rapper. So we're having some fun and literally we don't know who it is and we got misinformation. And you're talking about that. You're talking about how we never heard of him before. And we're also saying Drake's our guy, right?

And so there's nothing wrong with that. And then next thing you know, I guess Wale's getting tweets and messages. So then he starts walking up to have a conversation. Now, he's not the biggest guy. And so as he's walking up, I'm going, like, just ignore this guy. Like, who cares? And it ends up being this whole ridiculous situation.

And Maddie said to us, look, we don't know in disrespect. We're talking about Drake, and we made a joke of the fact that we don't know. Right. And Wally ended up. Which is true. And he ended up actually taking a beating on social media. I remember watching E! Entertainment, all these shows, saying, what's up with Wally?

Stuff like that. So, anyway, they ended up, Matt and Wally, I wasn't on Twitter at the time. And Matt and Wally both ended up getting a big bump off of that whole thing. And that's probably when you decided to join Twitter. It's like, I can't miss out on this. No, actually, after that, I was going,

I don't want to be on Twitter. Because it was crazy. But the aftermath of that was kind of crazy. Jason on Twitter asks, do you ever have to ask Drake to get out of the way when he's standing up in front of your table?

Okay, here's what people, like some guy, some guy the other, last night, makes a big deal about it and he tells me, like, I should be doing something about it.

I go, dude, first of all, that's not my pay grade, okay? That's number one. Number two is, when you call a game, the monitors in front of us are as important as the live action because what the fan doesn't understand is that i have to see what you're seeing not just what i'm seeing right so if i'm courtside i got a certain angle certain perspective that i need and i can hear things that are they're valuable for

the context but that monitor is critical because I need to know what you're watching. So when you're doing a game, you're actually watching live and monitor as much as, there's almost an equal. Also, there's a replay there that you. Yeah, there's replays and you're calling for stuff. You got to talk back, you talk to your producer, give me that, give me this or whatever else, or he's telling you, we got this for you.

And you talk about all that stuff. So the coaches, nobody talks about Nick Nurse or Dwayne Casey standing in front of us the whole time. Nobody talks about that. But if Drake stands up, hey, you've got to do something about that. Come on, man. It's like this guy, to me, this guy is an icon. This guy, and he loves Canada.

He loves Toronto. he promotes it no one reps the city as hard as yeah and so like you think i got an issue with him standing up there and cheering and and you know all the players know him everybody hangs out and like he takes cleveland out all night long when we have to play so i mean to me i think he's great and and it's uh i have no issue with that. People make such a big deal about it. And quite honestly, it really doesn't affect our ability to... How come nobody says, could you believe the Washington Wizards put you up in Section 208

on the baseline side so you can't even see if the ball went in? Nobody says that. And I'm not supposed to do anything about that. I'm pro-Drake, okay, big time here. But I will say on behalf of fans, there's a sentiment that perhaps he rivals up the opposition. When he's chewing out Giannis or something, it just makes Giannis want to beat us more, maybe?

Fans don't realize that there's a lot of trash talking all the time. Right. And guys are, you know, it's nonstop. So everybody's so used to it. That's just commonplace. You almost expect it with especially like somebody like a Drake or, you know, like a Spike Lee. They're always like doing all this stuff. That's a good example.

That's Spike Lee and Reggie Miller. They're a good example of riling them up. No, but Reggie Miller was the kind of guy that used that. You don't have – okay, if you talk trash to Michael Jordan, you talk trash to Reggie, you talk trash to Larry, they're coming at you, and they're coming at you hard. Even LeBron, to a certain extent, if you want to get him going, he's coming. Today's player is a lot different.

You know, look at your your guy dunks on you and you're giving a hey dude the guy just dunked on you right right come on like seriously you're you're hugging and kissing and like that's the aspect of today's game that i have an issue with that you know danny age used to play for the blue jays yes and kevin mHale was my teammate in Minnesota. We're playing the Celtics my rookie year. And before the game, we were on the court. Everybody's shooting around. And Danny, when he played for the Blue Jays, played pickup ball with me every day at St. Mike's.

Amazing. So he'd have a game that night. We're playing three hours of pickup on game day in Toronto. His coaches didn't know, though. Yeah, no. And so, you know, because we knew I had the runs, right? I had the runs. You want to get a good run, you come to St. Mike's.

For sure. Or you come to wherever I was. Oh, man, I wish we had some video footage of this. I said, like again, like I said before, I got nothing. But Danny Ainge used to hang out and run with us in Toronto. Wow. So I'm on the court before the celtic sixer game and it's kevin and danny i go hey what's up it's like hey they turn like nobody's talking i'm all excited

to see my friends and they don't even want to talk to you right because it's a celtic sixer game right right actually funny you want to yeah funny story yeah so my first celtic um sixer game it's an exhibition game now pre-season with the world champions sixers is pretty casual right you're you're stomping people and everybody's laughing guys playing it out no big deal right yeah one game we had a we had a practice full practice right before the game so it's not like this there's, you know, it's no big deal. We go to Boston. And so, you know, I'm a rookie, so don't be late. So I get to the bus 10 minutes early.

Billy Cunningham, the coach, is looking at me like, dude. I'm going like, oh, shit. I'm the last guy on the bus. And I'm 10 minutes early. And nobody's talking. Nobody's laughing. Oh, okay. All right. So I'm sitting there. We guy on the bus. And I'm 10 minutes early. And nobody's talking. Nobody's laughing. Oh, okay. All right.

So I'm sitting there. We get to the arena. They put you in this Celtics, the little tiny locker room. It's too hot. There's no water, like all this stuff. And nobody's joking around. Nobody's talking. So I go, okay.

The game starts. It was unbelievable. It was seriously unbelievable. There was four fights. One point, Moses and, no, it was Larry Bird and Ivarone. Mark Ivarone and our team. Larry Bird grabs him, almost rips his shirt off, and then the referees separate him, and Red Auerbach comes out of the stands, and he's yelling at Moses Mone.

He goes, hit me, you big son of a bitch. Hit me like this. He's got the cigar inside of his mouth. Then Larry Bird finds out he's thrown out of the game. He tries to punch Mark Iveroni in the head, and then a couple plays later, you got Moses on top of, you know, somebody, Danny A, I don't know, somebody. There's a brawl on the floor.

And then there's Sedale three gets punched in the face by Gerald Henderson. I'm going like, this is an exhibition game. Right. Right. This is the first half of an exhibition game. Red Auerbachs come out of the stands. Like, I'm going, oh, my goodness. Right.

That was my intro to the Celtic sixer rivalry. Now, you don't get that today. No. Now, first of all, everybody would be thrown out for the stands. Like I'm going, Oh my goodness. Right. That was my intro to the Celtic six or rivalry. Now you don't get that today. No. Now, first of all, everybody be thrown out for a year, but I mean, but you just don't get that.

Like players in my, it's just too nice. There's too much niceness. Too much camaraderie. Yeah. Well, you know what it is. Everybody's playing against each other from a one.

They're all buddies. They play each other against a hundred times a year. And I think there's a, just a different weight carried into each game today. How does Matt Devlin compare to Chuck Swirsky? Chuck was a shtick guy. Yeah. Very much a shtick guy. Salami and cheese.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And although some of his phrases weren't his. Oh. shtick guy yeah very much a shtick guy salami and cheese yeah yeah yeah and uh although some of his phrases weren't his oh come on onions onions is onions is not chuck onions is bill raftery you know and and real time yeah so there's a few things like that the canadian fans uh you know credited to the because i remember i'd say you know say onions our good friend bill rafting no that's chuck no that's not chuck uh but uh you know, credited to the, because I remember I'd say, you know, say Onions, our good friend Bill Rafnick. No, that's Chuck. No, that's not Chuck.

But, you know, so, yeah, Chuck was definitely more shtick. Matt's more, you know, Matt's more of a numbers guy. And, you know, he's been around. Matt's actually a multi-sport guy. I mean, that's the one thing I respect. You look at Rod Black and Matt Devlin. They are multi-sport guys, man. That's not easy to do.

I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they keep tabs on everything and be that proficient. Well, I mean, I'm thinking like Dan Schulman, for example. He's as excellent at calling a baseball game as he is at calling an NCAA basketball game. Oh, no kidding. And I think

I look at it from my side, how lucky I've worked with John Saunders, Dan Schulman, Matt Devlin, Rod Black. I mean, you look at the names, and on the U.S. side, Mike Tirico, Mike Breen. I've worked with so many amazing guys. It's just, they make it easy. They really do.

You've got a lot of friends on the, I want to say on the beat, but guys who cover the route. I'm thinking of somebody like a Michael Grange. Yeah, I know Michael well. You know, you've got, I think you kind of, you know, all the guys, you know, Brad Fay, Mike Grange, you know, Ryan Wolstad, you know, Bruce Arthur, all these guys. You kind of have, you know, a camaraderie.

Some guys, you know, better than guys, you kind of have a, you know, a camaraderie, uh, some guys, you know, better than others, like a normal, uh, and, uh, you know, some guys, uh, uh, you got different relationships with from the time when I was coaching and, uh, you know, you heard it, you had a different side of some of them when you're coaching the Canadian national team and you got a different side of these guys. Is that like a Doug Smith or who? There's different people that, uh, that, uh, you kind of get a different perspective on things. Gotcha. Canadian national team, and you've got a different side of these guys. Is that like a Doug Smith? There's different people that you kind of get a different perspective on things. Gotcha, gotcha. Now, do you want to comment briefly on,

so you were head coach of the Canadian national team. They didn't qualify for the 2000 and, was it the six Olympics? No, 2008 Olympics, but they did qualify for the 2010 World Championship, but you resigned in September 2011 after we lost to Panama in the FIBA. No, I didn't. That was another, I think that was a Doug Smith line that Panama forced me to resign, which if he did a little bit of homework,

he would have found out that that decision was made well before. And I told Wayne Parrish that I'd be done because I felt that at that point in time it was time for a new voice uh when i took over canada basketball people forget that the cupboards were bare uh you got to remember in 2004 they had steve nash roland barrett a veteran team and they got spanked by brazil by argent, by just spanked when you had the best point guard in FIBA. Right. Right. So something had to happen and you couldn't stay with the, with the top guys because a lot of those guys retired. And it was, if you stayed old, you were just, you know,

remember the, the, the image of the program. Okay. It's racist. It's a, it's an old boys network. It's this, it's that. Okay. That was the order boys network it's this it's that okay that was the order number one okay this program is for everybody that means going to the communities going to a you guys going everybody and embracing everybody and saying hey look we have to change this and then that first summer we played in uh in a in a world qualifier and in a domin a Dominican, and we got spanked. Rightfully so, we got spanked. But the coverage was amazing because you had, I'm not going to say who, but people say, this is the lowest point in the history of the program.

I go, no, no, no. If you want to say Leo Routon sucks, say that. I have no issue with that if you don't like me as a coach. But don't assassinate the program and the kids because everybody's saying people don't want to play for Canada. Why? Make Canada something you want to play for. And when you say that, okay, well, let me ask you a question.

A team that doesn't belong on the floor with the competition loses versus a team that has the best player in the world in FIBA gets killed. That's not the lowest point? So you tell me what's the lowest point. I don't know what the lowest point is, but I know you want to build a program. And then you'd have somebody else wrote, we lost to Panama. Can you believe Canada lost to Panama? And I go, wait a minute.

Do you want to tell? And I confronted this one guy. And I said, tell me about Panama. He goes, I don't know. I said, what do you mean you don't know? I said, name the name. Tell me who he is. I don't know.

Do you know he's the leading rebounder in the entire Americas? Do you know that this guy is this? Do you know that this? No. But it was just a good thing to write to trash the program so things like that were going on and i said okay you know what i remember i went to uh after that tournament uh fred night camp was the uh ceo of canada basketball and he goes what's wrong i said fred our younger guys just won a bronze medal in the world championships our 20 i think it was at that time was 20 and under um and i said look if i had my choice those guys

would have been playing here but we wanted canada to have success and get a medal and that was one of the first times they meddled right and they had success but that that's where we belong right now that's our youth so we have to like i can't keep plucking guys up here and putting them on a team we're not going to win that day's done all our kids are down here and we got it we got to build this up so from that point on so that's 2006 canada basketball i think and then wayne parish came in uh who did a phenomenal job of restructuring how we did our business. And the business was, let's get to the communities, let's get to the kids, let's get to the coaches,

let's do everything we can to build this from the ground up. And all of a sudden, and remember, the NBA is here now, so you've got kids playing, more and more kids playing. And all of a sudden, you'd have these kids like Tristan Thompson, Corey Joseph, all these younger kids. And my message to them was, hey, you see this national team? If you're good enough, you can move these guys out. Move them out.

I'm not keeping anybody around, okay? I want guys, you to come up here. And that was the message. And you know who was really important? Roy Rana. And that's why I'm kind of pulling for him now with the national team that, um, I had a conversation with Roy when I was coaching, because obviously Roy wanted to be with the senior team. Right. And I wanted him around, but I said, Roy, I need you to do me a favor. I need you with the young guys, right? Because they're our future. You got great relationships. You do a great job with these guys. You're welcome with me. Anytime you want to come

up, go on a tour, you know, be part of the, you're, you're, you're good. That's good. But I need you there because I don't want to risk somebody else being there and these relationships being, you know, compromised because these kids are a future and and i i thank roy to this day every time i say him he bought into that right you know he he put himself aside for the team and he's still doing it and everything he's done done for the program you know subbing in for jay triano being you know whatever whatever he's asked he's done but roy was a big part of building and growing these young kids. And now look, you know,

we have so many NBA players and these kids all want to participate and play for Canada. Well, so Fabio kind of piggybacks on that and says he wants to know your opinion on the state of Canadian basketball today. He says there's lots of Canadian talent in the NBA. Yeah, it's phenomenal.

I mean, Canada right now has more NBA players than any other country outside the United States. And that number is going to continue to grow. That's not getting smaller. I mean, just this draft, we're going to have, you know, maybe four or five Canadian kids in the draft. And next year, again, there's going to be more. So that number is going to continue to get stronger.

You look at the kids. Remember, it used to be kids go to the NCAA, and, you know, they'd be on a team. Some guys had a more significant. Now we've got stars. We've got guys going and are key players, and they're coming out after a year. Yeah. And they're not just showing up at schools. They're making better decisions in the schools they pick.

So everything's changing. The AAU programs and the prep schools now, all these kids used to leave. This is where, quite frankly, Ontario School Board really dropped the ball, you know, not having their own prep level. All they did was criticize kids that went to the States. You know, they criticized them. Well, what's high school now?

It's nothing. It's the prep. You know, they criticized them. Well, what's high school now? It's nothing. It's the prep programs that are everything for these kids. Well, they could have done that. They could have had that level, that extra level for a higher performance. And what you have now is that kids don't have to go south. They can develop here. They don't have to leave their families. They can stay home.

You even have American kids coming up here. And I'll tell you, from the AAUs, like my son played in the aau thing the teams from up here orangeville prep all that you know you look at all the teams now they're they're they're the top teams we go to tournaments in the states we're beating all the top teams so it's completely changed that's the leo effect i'm telling you it's not the leo it's you know you know what it is it's the nba effect to be honest with you right i i think canada basketball has had its hand in it, like I said, going to the grassroots. But when the NBA came here, it changed everything.

I mean, when I was a kid growing up, I said I wanted to play in the NBA. But how realistic was that? I mean, you rarely saw it on TV. It was a fuzzy channel from Rochester, right? You hardly ever saw it. And now kids, I mean, they can watch 300 games a year. You can go to NBA games. You can go to clinics like the Raptors.

They put on clinics and coaches clinics. I'm a firm believer that if you can see it, feel it, taste it, touch it, you can do it. And these kids now believe they can do it. Amazing. Now, tiny bit of Raptor chat before we get out. But first, I remember, so Milan asked you a question earlier, and you had some great answers. But I forgot to tell everybody listening that go to FastTime. It's FastTimeWatchRepair.com to find a location near you. They have a new location in Richmond Hill. And if you mentioned you heard about them on

Toronto Mike, they'll give you 15% off your regular priced watch battery installation. Just mention you heard about them on Toronto Mike. So thank you, Fast Time and Watch and Jewelry Repair. And I mentioned Brian from propertyinthesix.com and he's got the Gallery of Mall Condos. Well, he has a question for you about the Raptor game last night. So this is Brian. Property in the six dot com.

Hey Leo, Brian Gerstein here. Sales representative with PSR Brokerage and proud sponsor of Toronto Might. Call or text me at 416-873-0292 if you are interested in any new developments, not just the upcoming gallery and mall condos that my brokerage is selling. I can handle all

of the due diligence for you to determine if it is a project worth living or investing in. Leo, we now have a series, but Game 4 is as much of a must-win as Game 3, and I'm still pissed about Game 1 as we could be up 2-1 now. Does it frustrate you watching American coverage when they keep talking about Jeremy Lin and how they don't understand why he's not playing and part of the rotation? If Lin got no burn last night, with Lowry fouling out, Fred hitting one free pointer, and seemingly lost,

can we just accept the fact that Nurse will never use him other than garbage time? That's a good question. You know, we get a lot, even on Twitter, like fans are saying, put him in, right? And here's the thing. I know one thing that Nick Nurse knows his players way better than we do. Right? He knows them intimately in every possible way. And I think Nick Nurse gave Jeremy Lin a very good opportunity when he got here.

And actually, I was excited the first week or two. I actually liked the way him and Kyle played. Because, you know, Jeremy's a smart guy, and they had this little connection. I really liked it. I commented several times in the broadcast that I thought it was really good. But then something happened. Jeremy, he just looked like he forgot how to play. And I don't mean this as a shot, but he just really struggled. The simplest plays seemed difficult.

He couldn't make shots. You know, he'd dribble off his foot. He just seemed to lose his own confidence. And I give Nick Nurse credit because there were a lot of people saying, why are you playing him? The same people now that are saying you should play him were saying, take him out. And so I think Nick Nurse gave him every opportunity.

And when coaches are in the playoffs or when coaches are in this situation, they go with the guys they trust. And also on that note, I think Nick Nurse did a great job. He didn't buckle. Everybody's saying, get this guy out, get this guy out. He's going to his guys and going, you know what? I believe in you, man. I know you're struggling.

Give me this. Give me the best defense you can give me, and I believe you're going to make your shots. Just let it fly. Just play. me this give me the best defense you can give me and i believe you're going to make your shots just just just let it fly just play and you know when a coach does that for you it means a lot and for mark gasol for example he could have been benched but he comes back and has the game he had last night and he played like 20 minutes with five fouls yeah yeah and like he was instrumental in so many things that happened aside from scoring but but he scored. And you look at Fred.

Like, Fred did a lot of good things last night. Okay, he only made one shot. It was a big one. Danny Green only made one shot. But look at everything they're doing, and obviously you want them to shoot better. There's no question. But I give a lot of respect for Nick Nurse to not to buckle

and not to play into the pressure of listening to everybody and just do what you need to do. Trust your instincts. You mentioned Nick Nurse. Now, last question here. I have one more question, but one last question from the listeners. Jay Reeves wants to know, what does Leo like about Raptors coach Nick Nurse?

One, I think he's contrary to what people that don't know the game, they're saying I think he's very good at reading the game in-game as it's going. I think he feels the game well. I think he reads the game well. You've got to remember that you can have the best laid plans and you can be the best coach in the world. If people don't make shots on all the plays, you're going to struggle, right? You're going to have your issues.

And I think he's done a really good job of just weathering that. And he's loose. I'll be very honest. I think one of the things that has hurt the Raptors in the past, and I got a great deal, and I've said this, I got a great deal of respect for Dwayne Casey. He's a tremendous coach. But you could feel tension from end of March to the start of playoffs. You could feel tension building. And I think it impacted the players because I know when I'm a coach, if you feel my tension, it's going to have a negative impact. So I know when I was coaching, I was trying to get you to relax,

get you to play. I want you to play. You know, I don't want you worrying. I want you to play. I don't want you to look at me and see stress. I want you to say, we got this, man. That's what I want you to play. I want you to play. I don't want you worrying. I want you to play. I don't want you to look at me and see stress. We got this, man. That's what I want you to see. And I think with Nick, you get that. I think that he's got that where this isn't the end of the life. Your life's not going to end here, man. Let's just go play. Play hard. You listen to him during the timeouts. We get to hear him. And I like the way he interacts with guys. And think about this. You listen to them during the timeouts. We get to hear them. I like the way he interacts with guys.

Think about this. You had a lot of guys having a career year this year. Abak had a career year. Kawhi Leonard. Yeah. When you look at the way he had to manage the load management, that's not easy.

Coaches get ticked off when all of a sudden, what do you mean I can't have him? Is it coming from Kawhi Leonard's camp? That's not easy. Coaches get ticked off when all of a sudden, what do you mean I can't have them? Is it coming from Kawhi Leonard's camp or from? It's not a camp. It's medical. And the Raptors have, people need to know his name. You know, Alex McKechnie, director of sports science. Alex is brilliant.

I'll tell you what, I could sit there and listen to him talk about your body and how to train your, and he's brilliant. And he's got five rings with the Lakers. He's worked with Shaq and Nash before he was in the NBA. He knows what he's doing. Oh, he knows what he's doing. And I told Alex, I called Alex when the trade happened.

I called Alex, said, you're the most important guy in this franchise because Kawhi Leonard needs to come back healthy, needs to believe he can play again. You're the guy that can do it. Right. And so load management isn't a camp decision. It's a medical decision. And,

and, and, and Nick just goes with the flow like this. I got, okay, this guy said, not okay. He,

he plays the cards he's dealt in the best way he knows how. And we had a, you know, great season finished second in the conference, where if we win at home tomorrow night, we tie up the series. Yeah. Yeah. And think about it. Without load management.

Right. He paid 52 minutes. Wouldn't be here. Yeah. And people, like, the guy missed an entire season. Right. And you have to think that there's something pretty serious going on when you know kawaii okay listen everything he says does that guy want to play yeah that guy's all

he that's all he wants to do is play right if you talk to him and the guy like last night he could have he could have bailed out in that game long you know easily he wants to play so here i really believe that kawaii thought his career might be over. He was that worried about his situation. And the Raptors fixed that. You know, knock on wood, the Raptors and Alex McKechnie did a great job. So load management, everybody made a joke about it. People criticized it. People say, I bought tickets to the game. Well, guess what? You know what? This is not just about now in the season. It's about this guy's career. It's about his career, and it's about right now, like being able to have Kawhi now when it matters.

Well, Kawhi said all the 82 games is practice. This is game, right? This is where it's at. And for all intents and purposes, it's true. If you look at NBA regular season versus playoffs, you start to wonder about the regular season now because it is such a different game. And defense and preparation are so different that it almost makes the regular season now because it is such a different game right and defense and preparation are so different that uh it almost makes the the regular season look laughable at

times so leo final question for me does he stay or does he go kawaii leonard he must have whispered something in your ear no he doesn't whisper anything in anybody's ear he uh uh i think the rappers have as good a chance as anybody to keep them. I think everything we just talked about is going to weigh into it. I also think that rappers can pay more, and that's a big factor. Toronto's a great city, man. If these guys

can keep rolling a little bit, I think it's all going to play into it, and I'm optimistic. I love it. Love the positivity. Leo Roudens, this has been an absolute pleasure. I stole an extra 30 minutes from you so you can beat me up later on that time flew man I had a good time thanks for doing this and maybe maybe next

winter I'll get you back to kick out the gym for sure I'll come back we'll have fun thanks so much man and that brings us to the end of our 467th show you can follow me on Twitter I'm at Toronto Mike Leo are you at Leo Roudens on Twitter. I'm at Toronto Mike Leo. Are you at Leo Roudens on Twitter?

Yep. I think so. Yes. And Leo's a great Twitter follow. You should definitely follow Leo for sure. If you like animals,

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