Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Explaining the NBA in Tech Terms!

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

It's bonus episode time! In this one, Marques and Alex try to explain the NBA in tech terms to Andrew and David who know nothing about it. If you've ever wondered which Apple Executive is Jalen Brunson then this one is for you! If you've never cared about basketball then this could be a fun way to see what all the hype is about. Follow us on socials: Marques: https://twitter.com/MKBHD Andrew: https://www.instagram.com/andrew_manganelli/ David: https://www.instagram.com/davidimel/ Adam: https://www.instagram.com/parmesanpapi17/ Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin Rufus: https://www.instagram.com/rmullhaupt/ Alex: https://bsky.app/profile/alexwolfe.bsky.social Waveform: Twitter: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Threads: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/waveformpodcast/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Intro/Outro music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Feel like you're being told to wave a magic AI wand and everything will just get better? Sure, AI can chat and summarize. But what about big business problems? Like rerouting stock through a canal that won't unblock. Enterprise AI needs context for that.

So Salonis provides it. The Salonis context model gives AI options. operational clarity so agents know how your unique business runs and how to improve it. Meet the model at C-E-L-O-N-I-S dot com slash context. Is it a pump fake where you pretend to shoot and then you don't? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Steph Curry does that a lot. Yes, he's very good at it.

It's like when you're about to ship a product, when you don't. Like air power. It's like the head fake. Yeah, what's up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the waveform podcast. We are all of your hosts. I'm Marquez. I'm Alex.

I'm Andrew. And I'm David. And in this bonus episode, we're going to be covering a whole bunch of things, but mostly sports. And the way that we're going to do it is we have our fellow non-ball knower. Hey, hey, hey. Andrew and David over here, guests slash hosts who we want to explain the massive amount of overlap between sports and tech. and we have a lot of analogies and similes and ways of explaining that. And Alex and I,

ball knows of the podcast. And maybe we'll get some Rufus and Adam over there chiming in as well. I don't know anything. We split the producer table. I don't know any ball. Okay. Rufus is on our side. Even better. Even better.

Okay. So then we're going to use all of this to hopefully get you guys caught up to speed on the incredible world of what's happened in basketball for the last couple weeks slash months by using tech. Oh, I know the last couple weeks. I just do not know the last couple of months. David is, David has quietly become a ball knower.

I mean, if you heard the last, loudly, you were pretty dialed, but there were still plenty to learn. Obviously, there's lots of lore and things to, like Mike Bibby.

Can I add the first beat for this episode? Can you f***ing up? Oh. It's a classic. There's a couple things you kind of just start chanting when you become a sports fan. That's one of them.

It's a classic chant now. Yeah. And Nixon 5, if you just live in the area, you just walk outside and say that and people like high five you. We don't say good morning anymore. Yeah. Six and five. Yeah.

Especially new. You make sure whenever you order breakfast for the next six months, you just order a Brunson egg and cheese. You don't have to explain it. They'll just know what it is. Is it special? Is it different than a regular egg and cheese? No, it's not. It's a bacon and cheese.

It's just a Brunson egg and cheese. It's just named in his honor. No, it has Saratramayo. Does it? Does it? Are you guys kidding me? I don't know. It all stem from like this kid asked him, what's your bodega order?

and he said, well, I don't actually live in the city, so I don't have a normal bodega order, but if it was going to be that, it would be this. I thought you guys were going to teach us. Yeah, who knows the Lord here? Damn, man. Turn tables. Yeah, it has saracha mayo on it.

Oh. That sounds better. Incredible. Well, we're going to go through all of this, starting from the rules of modern NBA, and then the teams and the history, and then maybe a little bit of, like, I think I want to end this by talking about the fan overlap,

because there's so much overlap between fans of tech companies. and the tribalism in the sports world that I feel like we need to just bandwagon on to some team before the end of this. Okay. Apple in five. Five, bro. Just like that.

Five, one. Yo, shut up, Google in five, bro. Google and five. Exactly. One plus is out of the finals. Yeah. The NBA altogether. One plus got knocked out in the first round.

Let's be real. All right. So I think let's start with the rules. Just like, what is the NBA? The NBA, obviously, a basketball league here in the U.S. And how many teams are in the NBA? 30? 30.

Is it national basketball association? Yes, it is. Very good. Good job, David. Ball Knower. Actually, wait, there is going to be 32 teams soon. Right. They're expanding two years.

Yeah. Expansion. Seattle? Huh? Seattle and... Presumably Seattle and Vegas are about to get teams. And then one team is going to move to the Eastern Conference. Yeah.

Yeah. Which is a good opportunity maybe to talk about teams in general because obviously there's lots of tech companies who you can kind of think of as teams. And I'm trying to think of what would an expansion team be? It would be kind of like a startup, right? You need to build the whole thing from the ground up very quickly and then just join the league. It would be kind of like a startup. So we're going to have some startups soon, which is interesting to root for.

They don't have any history. But you have some teams that have been around for a very long time who have a history of winning in the past, ups and downs. They've had rosters, aka employees, who have done amazing things, sometimes terrible things, that have caused the companies to rise and fall. And so whenever you watch those tech companies, you're kind of like watching the players for the team affect their outcomes. Can I almost every question I'm going to ask is going to preface with saying,

this is what happens in hockey. Does this happen in basketball? Okay. And if I'm correct, Seattle had a team at some point, right? So bringing it back potentially has like an old fan base coming back to it. This happened with the, uh, Winnipeg. If I may, Seattle got really kind of hoax. by their ownership group who decided,

for whatever reason, I think they changed ownership in the late 2000s, and then the owner, for whatever reason, really wanted to move them to Oklahoma City and just take them out of Seattle. But the Seattle fan base was really passionate, but it was like an arena issue where the city didn't want to pay for a new arena or something.

And so they moved them to Oklahoma City, and Seattle has been starved for basketball since then. They now have a WMBA team. Are they going to play in the Cracken Arena? There's a new NHL arena. I think so. Yeah. I think they'll play in the new arena.

I mean, it's a sick arena. It's not final yet, but presumably that is where they will. Climate change arena? Yeah, it's one of the only arena. Climate change. Sorry, climate change arena is crazy. It's like one of the only arenas that's down. So if you look from the ice,

you can see this big window and that's actually the sidewalk of the street. Oh, that's awesome. It's like my apartment. Nice. Yeah. Okay, so for David. Nokia. Nokia.

Nokia used to be a whole thing, great company, thriving, and then kind of just stopped. They do telecom stuff now. But they had to bring it back. Oh, yeah. And they bring it back and they've licensed that name, and they started making phones and doing things with that name again. That's Seattle getting an NBA team again. Okay. So they're licensing the name?

It won't be quite exactly the same team, but it will be fun to root for because we know that name. Because when that team moved, all the players moved. So a lot of Seattle fans probably became Oklahoma City fans, or were. so mad about it. That they, they follow their players. Yeah. But now they're getting a team. It's actually interesting too, not to get too into the weeds, but there's been multiple

times in the NBA where teams have moved and then come back or whatever. And it's created this weird history gap for certain teams. Like so, for example, the Charlotte Hornets back in the day moved to New Orleans. It became the New Orleans Hornets. But then they eventually added another team to Charlotte called the Charlotte Bobcats. And so then they were like, well, do we get the Hornets history? And it was like, no, you're a new team. You don't get history.

But then New Orleans was like, well, we don't like the name Hornets. We're going to change our name to the Pelicans. So there's a New Orleans Pelicans now. And then Charlotte with the Bobcats was like, wait, Hornets is on the table again. So let's become the Hornets again. That's weird. And now people are like, wait, so do the New Orleans Pelicans own the Charlotte Hornets history or do the Charlotte Hornets own the Charlotte Hornets history?

Wait, so I don't understand that. What's a tech version? I don't know what's a tech version of that one. It's not a perfect version. perfect one to one. Yeah, there's not a perfect one to one of everything. Maybe there's like, it's like Carl Pei, right? It's like he kind of ran one plus and then he started nothing.

Look at David is right. Well, but then, but how Carl Pay then bought essential, but just the name and now nothing has essential in it? So do they get the nothing history because they have just the name? Or do they get the essential history? You don't want this, the Andy Rubin history? Yeah, so if they made a new company called Essential, like would they get the essential history or would it just be the nothing? Essentially. Yeah.

Hey. If they made that gem phone, I'm all in on the ball, you know what I'm saying? All right. So anyway, basketball, the rules are pretty simple. I don't know if you need to take analogy, but obviously the teams are just trying to score the most points. You have four, 12-minute quarters. You can pass the ball, dribble, you can't foul or travel. Pretty basic sports.

Does Wemby know that? Well, Wemby's core tenets of basketball is fouling people. Can I ask a question based on what I saw last week? Yes. When I was a child and I watched the Sacramento Kings play with Mike Bibby. Yes. They like you couldn't, you had to dribble when you were walking when you were moving down the court. When I was watching last week, a lot of people were not doing that.

Okay. So this brings to the core tenets of basketball. So why don't we talk about the core tenets? Okay. Give me the rules. The three core tenets of basketball. If you go up to any court in America and you just want to try to play basketball. Yeah.

Three court tenets. Dribble, pass, shoot. Those are your three things. Okay. Right? No defense. So it's called traveling. Is it called traveling if you walk with the ball but you don't dribble?

So I thought so. Dribbling is if you're, if you have the ball and you're moving in basketball, you get three steps without dribbling at some point. Three. Yes. But if you pick up your dribble and you're like going to finish a layup, you get. What's a layup? We'll get there. Okay.

Everyone was like, David knows ball. I'm asking for the audience. But many of our audience members do not know. David is playing a character. He's method acting. That's right. Good safe. That's right.

But so dribbling is when you're dribbling down the court. That's how you set up. Bouncing the ball. Yeah, dribbling is bouncing the ball up and down into your hand. So that is like software dev. So that is like your core principle to basketball. It's like step one. Step one.

You got to have your software. So your IDE basically. Yes. Okay. Yes. It's your ID. Passing is how you get the ball from one player. to another. So there's five players on each side.

You throw it. And you throw it to your teammates so that you can try to break the defense and get inside. So passing, that's your testing. That's like your alpha testing, beta testing, trying to get to the end. Because the idea is to get a basket, right? So shooting, that's your deliverable.

So you throw it up. You throw it up and you deliver and you make a basket. Shipping your product. Shipping your product. If you use a lot of the same words, deliverables. Does that one they call it basketball too? No. We can deliver a product. Can you imagine a basketball coach is in the huddle?

And they're like, guys, guys, we've got to really hit on our deliverables right now. We got to get the passes and get our deliverables. We got to ship. We got a ship. The product market fit between the basketball and the hoop is really high. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, okay. Yeah, so the entire time these teams are trying to get as good as possible at shipping as many products as possible more than all the other teams.

Okay. I'm dead serious. They're trying. If you ship more products in the other team, you win. But you only have four 12-minute quarters, you know, the fiscal years, I mean, divide it up into quarters. Sure. Yeah, that's true. That's fair.

Yeah, okay. The more products you ship, the better. If you ship more than the others, you win. And in a single game, you might ship like 70 products. Yeah. And the thing is, you are competing directly against the other team who is trying to stop you from shipping products. Right. They're going to try to interrupt your testing, your development, your shipping.

your shipping process, all of that. Okay. But there are rules, right? So every team has players that have different roles and different styles, and occasionally a member of the other team will try to mess with your team. We don't like those players very much. Some call them, like dirty players. You're supposed to play within the rules, obviously.

Some people kind of try to bend the rules. Like Wembe. What do we say about Wembe? but we always know we always know that there are you know these pieces fit together like like puzzles these players on these teams these leaders and these teammates are all trying to ship products as quickly as possible but if they do their role really well then they can pass it to the to the next role and the next role you get through the software development phase really quickly and then you ship it and then you mark it and you do the whole thing really really fast

then you're successful okay so everyone has to know their role Nick's team as Apple executives go. Great. Okay. That's a great place to start. Nick's team as Apple executives. The captain. Just players.

You probably start with the captain, right? Yeah. Tell me about the roles. Yeah, great. So players have different size roles and players have different sizes also. And different appreciation. Yeah. And different appreciation just based on what they're good at.

In sports, it might be just because you're taller or shorter or you have a certain skill set that lets you do the thing. Yeah. That's kind of like in tech. you might be a really good supply chain person, or you might have a business mind, or you're a ruthless leader who's, like, galvanizing the troops and gets people behind him.

So sports team with a captain like the Knicks, that's Jalen Brunson. That's the captain. That's the MVP of the team, the best player, finals MVP. He's the guy that everybody recognizes when you look at that company. So at Apple,

Tim Cook. I think today, that's Tim Cook. It's also, Brunson is also very well liked. Yeah. And so Tim Cook seemed very well liked. Yeah, I'd say, I would say Steve Jobs for being a visionary, but it seemed like a lot of people were not the biggest steep jobs.

Yeah, if we got to use modern. He got results, but you know what I'm saying? Yeah, modern Apple. We'll go with Tim Cook just because he's the guy who's getting the results and he is ruthlessly consistent and maybe even a little underrated despite his success. So that's Jalen Brunson, Tim Cook. Okay. All right.

Who's the second player on the next we should go with? Carl Anthony Town. Carl Anthony Towns. Yeah. All right. Carl Anthony Towns is, I mean, there's a starting five on the team, so I feel like we should go through five, but he's arguably one of the most important players on the Knicks. So he's like benched until he's not. Is that the situation?

No. So he plays, he's a starter. Five players play at it. Five players start on the Knicks. Carl Anthony Towns, who happens to be a seven foot center who can shoot and pass and basically do everything a center should do. Seven foot? Yeah, seven feet tall. You're big boy.

He was crazy about basketball. Everyone looks normal sized. No, that's Jalen Brunson's six foot two and he looks tiny. He looks like he's five. Most of his head. But yes, he looks so small. Yeah. So Carl Anthony Towns is seven feet tall.

And he's, he's very well-rounded. So I feel like I would put him in a like executive position as well. I'm tempted to give him like getting a marketing manager. So in the postseason, I was going to say in the postseason, he actually was, he became a big passer. So if we're saying that passing his testing, he would maybe be like chief of software.

That could be. That's Craig Federigi. Yeah, Craig Federi. So Craig Federici, one of the most recognizable faces at Apple, pretty versatile, but everyone knows his chops, he leads the software team. And, yeah, that's, you know, Crownthony Towns has his specialty, but he's able to move around in his role

and do stuff like ship and tests. So, yeah, Coronet Towns, Craig Federee. I like that. John Hart? Or Josh Hart. It's Jaws. Josh Hart is Jaws. All right, we'll do Josh.

Josh Hart is Jaws. Is that because he's the longest tenured? No, that's Mitchell Robinson. I think Josh Hart would be Jaws because he's the marketing guy. And Josh Hart is the heart of the team. It's like the slogan. He's all over social media. He's like the face basically next to Brunson.

Okay. Yeah, Josh Hart, his role on the court is maybe not as large in terms of contributing to winning and shipping products. Okay. But you still need a Josh Hart on your team. You need someone who's going to do the dirty work, doesn't get a ton of credit, doesn't have the best counting stats. Yeah. He might only ship one product for the whole game.

Yeah. He's still going to be a winning party. He's going to ship the product that nobody else is doing. What makes him good? Just a simple drive to do the dirty work that nobody else would have done. In a basketball sense, that is jumping and getting a rebound that looked like no one was going to get, or diving on the floor for a loose ball that either team could have. have gotten. There's a lot more diving this season than I remember when I was a child. Yeah. Yeah. People

diving a lot. In Apple World, you know, Jaws is interesting because marketing tends to get, I feel like they get a lot of credit maybe for shipping, even though they don't actually ship anything. Right? Like marketing. But I do like Jaws because, yeah, it's a face that you recognize when you think about the company. And you need one. Got it. How many players are there again? We're just doing the starting five. So we're through three out of five now. Okay, but how many players are there on each team? 15. What? Well, actually, 18, including two-way players.

Why do they have that many? Because it's a long season. Wow, yeah, everybody, you can't be shipping products by yourself. You need help. All the time, you need help. So they've got to take breaks. The starting five are the ones that always start, and then they rotate out. For the most part.

I mean, sometimes the starters change, which is like executive turnover. Okay. Sometimes the executive is a performing way you want them to, and maybe you, maybe you, demote them, give them a little step down, or maybe you just fully cut ties. Oh, like a Siri AI guy. Yeah. Switching to John Turner as a CEO is kind of like benching, that would be like benching, uh, we're not going to do this. We would be like benching Jalen Brunson for a new point guard.

You know, it could be, you know what the real thing is, is it's going to be like in 10 years when Jalen Brunson is getting ready to retire. The Knicks will have a new point guard. ready to go. Right. And then they'll say, you know what, Jalen? And he'll make his own choice. This is the LeBron Luca, I think. Yeah, pretty much.

Yeah, like we're going to see this soon with LeBron and Luca Donchich, where LeBron is going to finally hang it up, say, you know what, I've had a great career. Is he still playing? Yeah. Wow. Just like Tim Cook, why didn't he win? Because he wasn't, his team wasn't good enough this year. Also, Luca, the guy who's replacing him, didn't play for most of the post-season.

Oh. So. Okay. Let's go through the rest of the guys. Okay. So we got typical AI overview starting five wrong. By the way, even when you click the images, every single photo is the five people you're talking about. But AIO.

Who did it add instead of Josh? What number is he wearing? Five precious. Precious. Precious wasn't even on the team this year. Oh, wait, really? I thought I pronounced his name wrong. And I was like, that stuff.

Precious secure, man. Oh, my God. He wasn't even on the team this year. All right. Last two starters. O.G. Anobi. O.

O.g. No. Jack of all trades. Definitely, Jack of All Trades. He's the guy that did the tip. He did the tip. Yes, exactly. And was incredibly versatile and useful for them for the entire playoff run.

Helped them ship a lot of products. Also help the other teams, help stop the other teams from shipping a lot of products, too. He's a defense guy? He's a two-way guy. He's doing a lot of the good positive shipping and a lot of the stopping the other team from shipping. Okay. In Apple, executive land. I got a reach one here.

Okay, hit me. Johnny Shruthy. Oh, I was going to say. I was thinking, yeah. Shrugi? Shrugi is the guy that makes the cellicons. And he's the like engine behind

the reason Apple is. I was going to say Ternis for like launching Apple Silicon. Ternis might be better. I think Siruji is good because not only is Apple Silicon so good that other companies have to like chase that

but it's like it's the reason that Apple is, it's not the head, it's not the iPhone like Jalen Brunson, but it is also a massively important thing for them. Yeah, yeah. I like that. I also like that I've recently found out in recent weeks.

I watched a couple interviews and he's like a really quiet guy. Sarugi? Yeah. No, no, no, no. Oji, Oji and Anobi? Oh, you've seen that, yeah.

He went on like on a late night show a couple of days ago. He's amazing. Every question, he just was like, yeah. It's because he probably hasn't slept in four days. Yeah. He's also extremely quiet.

Yeah. He's so funny. Yeah. Okay. He's the last guy. Last guy's Mikhail Bridges. I have a pitch for him. I've never heard of him.

Iron Man? He's six foot. But six, five. Oh, then I was six seven. Yeah, McKell Bridges is like six five or six six. He's a wing. He has a very, very long wing span, which is your, how far your arms go. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He's great, also great at defense, very similar Ogi Anobi. But I'm going to say, I think maybe he would be, I had to look this up, I'm not going to lie, Sabi Khan, chief operating officer. I knew the position I wanted to give him. I didn't know who it was at Apple. But I think McHale Bridges is a chief operating officer because he is extremely well-liked. He's a good vibes guy. He doesn't necessarily always make the biggest impact on the game,

but he's keeping everybody in line. He's keeping operations going. And we learned that after they won the championship, all the next players talked so highly of him. And his impact on the locker room and everything. What did he do in the games? What did you do in the games that was like a big deal? In the finals or in other games?

In the finals. In the finals, he played really good defense. He had a couple of games. Actually, technically the games. where Brunson scored almost 50 the final game. He was the second leading score with a whole 14 points. Shook it. Ships a product.

So he was the second leading score. Yeah. He does similar things to Ogeana Novi plays really good defense. And he actually, he does handle the ball a decent amount. So he did a decent amount of passing. So testing, you know, whatever our analogy is. It's like the executive that like gets in the testing and actually does some coding once in Yes. He can do a little bit everything.

But is it really on stage? He also never misses a game. He has not missed a game his entire NBA career. What? What a jinx that one? No, I mean, he... It's out there. It's been a thing. It's out there.

There's no jinx to get at this point. That's wild. Okay. Yeah. So there is obviously some puzzle piece nature to it. You got to have pieces that fit together. Not everyone can have overlapping roles. If you have a bunch of Jalen Brunson's, it sounds great, but you're going to be missing some parts of the game.

So you have these complimenting. pieces, kind of like different parts of an executive team on a tech company. And they all combined together to do the thing, ship lots of products, stop other companies from shipping products, take competitive wins, give other teams losses. That's it. Can we talk about the positions? Yeah. I guess the positions. Yeah, we kind of tried to, I mean, so chief operating officer being like the small forward who's kind of just in the middle of a whole bunch of things. The captain is often point guard doing most of the visible. Yeah, so the point guard in basketball.

These are fair questions. Yeah, it is. I never understood these except for center. Should I just list these real quick? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. I'll list them and I'll just give the basketball experts. Then we can start relating it.

Okay. You have five positions. Yeah. And these positions become more and more fluid over time. Like, I feel like these used to be more hard and fast, you know, like each position did a specific role. Now you're having people have to be way more multifaceted and how they play. In general, it's a one through five.

And the Golden State Warriors, who a lot of tech people maybe are familiar with because of their Silicon Valley roots. Oh, yeah, yeah. Let's compare them to Dota. Yeah, Dota also has five different roles. It actually probably is pretty similar. Wait, I'm going to try and help, and we're going to get these as mobile lanes. Okay.

You're not going to understand. We're just going to explain a niche thing in terms of an even more niche thing. From our audience, they know mobile lanes more than. But so the five people are. positions. Point guard traditionally is the smallest player on the team. They're guarding the points from the other team. No, they're running the point. They're running point, right? That's a common term. So they're running point, which is to say that they are the one bringing the ball down the floor and starting what your team does. So they have the ball in their hands the most. They're setting everybody up. Orchestrator. Orchestrating. I'm kind of surprised that they even like have a guy that's supposed to do that. Yes. Instead of just everybody. Teams that don't have that struggle. mightily.

It's like an IGL. Not having a good point. The Knicks for a long time did not have a good point card, which is why we all love Jalen Brunson so much. So the point guard is the guy who brings the ball down the floor, sets everything up for everyone. Yeah. The shooting guard is the second position.

There are two guards. So the shooting guard also generally a little on the smaller end for a basketball player. It's slightly bigger. Yeah. Which is to say six foot five. I'm five nine, baby. Point guard. That player typically high-level athlete, good shooter, scores the basketball a lot, delivers lots of products, right?

Small forward, so there are two forwards. This is the three now. One of them is called the small forward. What was the second one again? The first one was the one, the point guard. The second one is the two, the shooting guard. Now we're on the three, even bigger. The small forward, which is typically.

Are they always shorter? No, I mean, you know, Kevin Durant is considered a small forward, but he's like seven feet tall. We're roughly going in order of size. Six 11 and Alex. The one is the point guard. The shooting guard is a little bigger. Yeah. The small forward is a little bigger.

Yeah. Everybody keeps getting a little taller traditionally. Okay. The further you go down the numbers. Got it. Got it. So the three is a guy who's maybe six foot seven, six seven. Six seven.

You know? Yeah. And we'll be a versatile player. Defensive-minded usually. He plays good defense. Can shoot well. That sort of thing. And then you have your power forward.

Four. Big, powerful. Now we're getting to the biggest guys. Right. Tank. OG on Anobie on the Knicks is the four. Big strong man, big broad shoulders. Okay.

You know, typically like 610, 611, 6.9, maybe, something like that. And then you have the center, which is the biggest player, the five. And otherwise known as the pivot. Because they pivot in the post and they score down low. They bang elbows and they get redone. No. I feel like he does that. Do they generally score the least amount of times?

Depending on the center. Some of the most prolific scores in NBA history, have been centers. Like Will Chamberlain, who we'll talk about later. Will Chamberlain. We'll talk about him later. But in the modern game, yes, I would say centers generally score the least of the players on the team for the most.

Unless it feels like, it feels like Jalen Brunson kind of because he's shorter, he's kind of like shoving people, getting in there, really shoving his way in and then doing the two. That's because Jalen Brunson is a dog. Okay. That's another basketball term. With the W. Right.

Yeah. And that's why you sing who let the dogs out. Like the Knicks head coach does. Didn't he say stop that? At the... He did. I asked you to stop doing that. Yeah, yeah.

I think Brunson did that. Yeah, it's hilarious. Okay, wait, I have... So my terms are from League of Legends, but I think it should be pretty close to do that. What are the five legal legions? Okay, so I have point guard is mid. Mid-Kerry.

Don't call Brunton Mid. No, no. Mid is like the most important lane. They're the ones who can make it. to both lanes, they usually have the most kills in a game. Like, they are solo dominant. It seems mid is the same in Dota and League. Yeah, and they can, like, win a game.

If you are a really good mid-lainer, you can make it. That's true, yes. I have shooting guard. We call them ADC, or like the... I don't know what that means. Are they the ones that... We have it as, like, a bot lane carry that generally brings a support with them. They're farming a lot.

In league, it's generally attack damage versus attack. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just called carry in Dota. Okay, so carry. So that's like bot carry. Also can have a lot of kills but has a little more support with them. Yeah. And like kind of is like a damage whereas the point guard scoring all the points.

So maybe ADC bot carry is getting like assist. Attack damage carry. Oh, okay. Small forward, I have his jungle. We don't have a jungle lane in Dota. There's no jungle in Dota? Well, there is jungle, but they kind of push out of meta. Oh.

It's not. Okay. I can feel like 15 years. I could feel my eyes glazing over. Is this what people feel like when I explain sports to that? Have you seen us the last 20 minutes? Yeah. I get it now.

Oh, my God. I understand so much about myself and others now. Okay, imagine old jungle then. Well, there was never a dedicated jungle lane. Okay. It's just like... Well, it's not a lane, but it's a position. In Dodey of mid-carry, you have a tank, which is called off-lane.

I know that one. I know that one. This is like when you know one basketball thing. I know tank. I know tank. Yeah, but they don't call it tank and Dota. That's called Offline. Whatever.

And then there's two supports. There's hard support, which is like the weakest support that supports the hard carry. Okay. And then there's a soft support which supports the tank slash offline. I don't want to say this out loud because I'm going to get destroyed by the Dota fans that have made it this far under the basketball con. That's right. I have a feeling jungle and soft carry or soft support are probably pretty similar. Like jungle in league is they're just farming the middle and not taking farm from everyone else.

And then they're supporting all of the other lanes by jumping into them. Yeah, sort of like soft support. Sorry, what is farm? Is this Farmville? In these games, in order to get money to get more items, there's also non-playable creeps. And if you hit them last, you get money. So you are fighting each other and fighting to get money at the same time. What did the creeps do to get categorized as creeps?

Where they... Not for this podcast. They work for the wrong-up. They're kind of creepy, to be honest. They're creepy-looking. Okay, so then I have power forward as top, which for you... Power forward? Oh, that's the basketball term.

I've never heard that in Dota before. I have it as top lane, which for you is tank. It sounds like they're very similar. And then just main support, did you call it main support? Hard support. Hard support. Hard support. Hard support.

Hard support. Hard support. Center. What is the center one in basketball? Big boy. He's the guy in the middle. Big boy in the middle. Biggie in the middle.

He's gobbling up rebounds and kicking it back out. Playing defense at the ramp lane. Who's the last line of defense in... Does PowerFords score more than center? Traditionally. A little bit. Traditionally. I say a top lane generally...

So the off lane is usually the initiator. So I feel like the initiator has got to be the point guard. Okay, maybe the... No, no, no. Point guard should definitely be midline. They're the carry. They're getting all the kills. They're scoring all the points.

Maybe. That can be variable in basketball. Could be the point card. It could be the point guard. Whoever your best player is. And Wilson Brunson's a mid-lainer. He's definitely. For sure.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing. And this might be true about Dota, too. You know, there's the roles in the play style from the one through the five. But different teams have a different member of that team being the best player. So if your best player is your one, then you build your team around that. If your best player is your three, then you build your team around that. If your best player is a five, you build your team.

I don't think how much you compared them perfect. Like that makes this argument even stronger. Like, yeah, a top lane can count. as an unkillable tank, like sometimes. All sports are the same. Yeah, that's what we're saying. Even e-sports. Even e-sports.

Can you guys, so I play CS and Valerent. Can you explain? Oh, my God. How about Candy Crush? Wait, so really, the basketball players are like the different angry birds. No, no. I mean, you're not wrong. Honestly, I could do that.

I'm a big angry birds guy, so I could do that. Let's continue with the basketball tech stuff, because we are a. tech podcast. So allegedly. What's next on your on your... Should we talk about types of shots? Yeah. Well, sure.

David did ask what a layup is. Yeah. Yeah. So the basket, you know what the basket looks like and you know what it means to score a basket. The ball goes through the basket, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So further away from the basket, harder a shot.

Yeah, right. Right next to the basket, if you're just laying it off the glass and in, that's called a layup. You just literally go lay up right next to the basket. If you actually jump up and slam it through the basket, that's a slam dunk. You've heard of that term before. I've heard dunk, yeah. You've heard of a slam dunk product?

Yeah, yeah. If something is a slam dunk, it's like the easiest bam guarantee it's going to be a winner. For sure. Like that's Apple made a fitness band. Like if Apple added USBC to AirPods Macs? Slam dunk, slam dunk, exactly. I don't know about that. As you get further away, all of these shots, by the way, are worth two points.

Yeah. Unless you're far enough away. If you get far enough away, there's a line, an arc around the basket. it's a three point line. If you shoot from behind the three point line and score, it's worth three points. You can imagine the distribution being like the easiest shots are right next to the basket.

They're worth two points. Unless you're Steph Curry. We'll get to him. He makes it look really easy. He makes it look really easy. Analytically, the next easiest shot is slightly further away and slightly further away. But you get to a point where

if you're at the longest possible two-pointer, you might as well step back and make it a three-pointer because it's not much harder, but it's worth 50% more points. Okay. A lot of teams study this and they realize, wow, if we want to ship a lot of products, it would be more efficient for us to ship a lot of three-pointers.

Right. Even though they're a little bit harder, they're worth a lot more points. Every EV startup ever who's like, we'd rather ship the really expensive ones right now. Oh. Before the cheap ones that feel like they're slightly harder to ship, but that you know you will ship way more of. Right.

That's the stuff that they're optimizing for. right? Like, Samsung ships like a bazillion skews of their phones and so does EVO and Apo. But Apple's just like, we only make five products but every single one of them is going to sell a bazillion. That's a really good, yeah. So certain companies like Samsung who ship a ton of stuff,

they're like, I'm trying to think of a team that just shoots whatever, the Hornets. The Brooklyn match a few years ago. Yeah, they'll just shoot their shot chart, which is like the graph on the court of where they shoot from, is all over the place. And it's fine because they're equally good at everything. And it's like,

They score a lot of points. So they take a lot of weird shots, but they hit a lot of them. But you might have heard of the Golden State Warriors who are maybe closer to Apple, conveniently because they're a California team, but they have a slightly more selective shot chart, meaning they're really good at three-pointers and layups and dunks. And why bother with the mid-range stuff? Like Apple could add stuff to their plate and ship more products, but iPhones, Max, that's all they really have to ship.

Unless you're Steph Curry and you shoot from half court. And that's like if the Vision Pro was successful. Yeah. Yeah, you've probably heard, yeah, there's terms like a Hail Mary or like a D buzzer reader. Yeah, yeah. That would be like a Vision Pro. Deep three. Yeah.

Okay. So, yeah, three-pointers. Steph Curry is really good at three-pointers. That's like Apple being really good at iPhones. Right. They ship a ton of them and there's not many who can stop it. Right. And why do anything else at this point?

Adam and I actually related that when we were cooking up this episode to like a software feature that initially you didn't think you needed, but that then you get it. And then you never want to live without it again. It's like it was the three point shot was disregarded for a long time as just sort of a luxury. A wireless charging. Right. And then it became. I love three pointers. Yeah.

And then and then suddenly teams came around on it and they said, wait, three is greater than two. why don't we show more of these No wire is better than wire. I don't get how people can't figure that out. Right. And then teams just became, now it's like you can't live without it. It's the feature you can't live without it.

NFC, wireless charging. Yeah. Oh, are you still going to talk about points? Because I have two questions about points. I could do, do you want me to give the nerdy math that has defined the NBA for the last 10 years? Yeah.

I want to make your guys as eyes glaze over real quick. I'm ready. Oh, okay. All right. So. Accomplished, Please. All right.

So the three-point shot used to be a luxury in the NBA. It was introduced in the 1979 to 80 season, where before that, any shot on the court was worth only two points. What? Yeah, they used to not. There was no extra line. That's crazy. Yeah. The 80s.

So we're 40 years away. This is already gone off the rails. It's not going to be a cutaway now. I'm blown away by that. So when I was watching the NBA in the 90s. There was a three-point. There was already a three-point. Did you hear when I said it?

They introduced it 7980 seasons. Yeah, that's crazy. That's so wild. Okay. So I'll start from the topic. No, no. All right, all right. Come on.

So the three-point shot is longer than a two-point shot. There's a line that defines where you do it, and it's worth, as the name implies, three points, instead of two points, right? So teams for decades still ran most of their offense inside the three-point line because that was previously what was considered, like, real basketball or whatever. And that's just what teams were used to. Yeah. But around 2014-15, Steph Curry's rise with the Warriors and they're getting Steve Kerr as head coach. Teams finally did some math and realized that three is greater than two. So explain how this works, percentages-wise, right?

So the nerdy math that has basically defined the NBA for the last decade is this. Every possession in the NBA is dictated by the amount of points you can get per possession, right? So what is a possession? So possession is each time you hold the ball. and bring it down the floor and try to score, right? A good point per possession number is generally anything over one. If you're scoring 50% of the time on a two-point shot, that's one point per possession, right? So shooting 60% on two-point shots has generally been kind of the line considered good for shooting a two-point shot.

If you shoot 60% of the time you make it, that's considered good. That's 1.2 points per possession. Okay. However, teams finally figured out, wait, if we shoot 40% from three, that's the same as shooting 60% from two. It's all 1.2 points per possession. Right, true. And therefore, teams put a huge emphasis on shooting threes about 10 years ago. Yeah.

And it has completely changed the entire game of basketball. Yeah. And made it more focused on shooting threes instead of twos. Would you say that trees are also harder to guard? to an extent it's also changed how defense is yeah i think the idea is it's easier to get above 40% from three

than it is to get above 60% from two right so people are if you can get a layup or an easy two that's great but those mid-range shots that are like a jump shot and someone's guarding you you might as well step back behind the three point line and make 40% of those instead of taking a long two and trying to make 60% of those Do you need an explanation of what a jump shot is, by the way? Jump and then you shoot it?

Yeah. Okay. It's pretty self-explanatory, but I want to make sure. Why don't even have a name for that? Thank you. Because you could take a set. Because a layup, you don't have to jump. You can also take a set shot.

You can take a shot without jumping. Right next to the basket. Yeah. You just sort of lay it up. That's a lay-up is where you like. So early, also the jumping is part of strategy. Early on, you used to have your feet set when you shot. But then people discovered that if you jump and then shoot, you can, you can,

can get your shot even higher up so nobody can block it. How long did it take for them to realize that? Yeah, basketball seems like they're just discovering the simplest thing. This wasn't real. They're like, new. It's not new. This is all in the 60s like at the beginning.

I think the jump shot came about in like the 50s. Wait, when did basketball start? 1930 something. Okay. With a peach basket. What is that? James Nason. A basket that you would collect peaches.

Oh, that's got a basket on a pole. 1891. They're a peach. 1891, man, I thought it was... 1891. The first game was in 1891. And it took them until the 50s to figure out if you jump, it goes higher. I'm approximating.

It's not that it took them... It's not that long to figure it out, but it's like you... The whole point of, like, scoring points is you want to be consistent and make it easy. And if you're jumping, that introduces a variable of like, well, if I jump a different height, I got to compensate for that and it's difficult. And so a lot of training and a lot of people doing it, eventually they figured out how to jump consistently and make shots. It's the same as the three point line. Like, that existed for many, many years. It's not like nobody realized it was worth three.

But teams finally got good enough at making that very long 25-foot shot that it finally became worth it. We can finally shoot 40% from three. Okay. So the evolution of the game has pushed slowly, slowly, slowly, incrementally better and better. Kind of like the chip getting slightly faster on the iPhone. It's not like we didn't know the faster chip could eventually play this game. But we've been working towards this slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, generation after generation until it's kind of. gotten to where it is today.

Okay. Okay. Two questions about points. Yes. Points. Points. Do you want the short one or the long one first? Either.

I guess both. Both at the same time. One, basketball players, why do they miss free throws? Why do they miss? They get so much money. Why? I can answer this. It's literally the same thing every time it's called free.

It's true. You should be. It should be a free point. Fantastic question. I mean, do you hit three throws at them? So, here's the real answer. I'm not getting paid a million. Here's the real answer.

If you watch an NBA player in an empty gym, they basically make every shot they take. I've never seen Kevin Clark Miss. It's kind of terrifying. Like they make basically every shot, right? When you introduce the variable of the real world, stuff gets a little weird sometimes. There's a crowd behind the basket.

They're cheering. There's pressure. There's a score. There's people who are like hoping, you know, there's a whole bunch more to it. This is like shipping software with bugs. Yeah, I was literally about to say bugs, dude. In theory, it should work 100% of the time.

I'm just pressing the button and the software is supposed to do the thing. Of course it should work every single time. It should be a free. It should be a layup for these companies. It should work every time. That's a really good analogy. But for some reason, you put it in the real world, and then people get their hands on it,

and it's doing stuff that you didn't expect, and it's odd. And it's not so much, yeah, obviously some of it is a skill issue, but it is just the fact that the real world variables sometimes throws you off. It throws some off more than it throws others off. Like, why did the screenshot tool in iOS 27 just not crop things anymore? Like, they couldn't have changed the code where they're like, we're changing the way screenshots work completely. They didn't do that. It's the same as before, but now it just doesn't work.

What happened? What happened? And that's like changing your shooting form. Sometimes players, they go, I don't think the way I'm shooting is proper. And then they change how they shoot and then it ruins it. They drag their liquid glass slider. That's crazy. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. I really like the bug analogy. My second question, when do I cheer for a point? Because they're so many of them. Yeah. Listen, if you have to cheer 50 times a game, you're not cheering as loud as you shouldn't.

No, that's a good. That's a valid. No, I think this is a super valid question. Because Andrew comes from a sport where they score once or twice. So you can't even score. This ain't soccer. The general rule of basketball is you wait. The most important times of the game are the final two minutes of each half.

So why wouldn't you only show up for the final two minutes? Because you're a real fan. Well, there's a storyline. There's a storyline. Okay, so. It all adds up. There are some more important baskets than others. So obviously if you're shipping 100 products in four quarters,

not every product is going to get a standing ovation. Sure. But we could do an apple analogy for this. Yeah. The bucket that they make in the middle of the third quarter is the polishing cloth. Yeah. Does it really. There might be a dunk.

It might be a really good cloth. There's going to be some fans that are going to cheer for that. For sure. That's fine. Worth the 20s. The buzzer-beater at the end of the fourth quarter that wins you the game is the iPhone. Yeah. You know.

They're going to ship this iPhone and it's going to push them over the edge. And the fans will go, ah, now we're the best. They cheer a lot of M-1. I have another analogy here. Yeah. So staying for all of the points is kind of like going to see these developer conferences at I.O. So you can see what's coming down. Like if you're there in the middle of a game and your team makes a bucket that is like, they haven't scored in so long,

but then they finally make a bucket, you can feel the momentum shift, and you can be like, oh, okay, this team is now going to, from this point forward, do well. And that's kind of like these developer conferences.

You go to the developer conference and you can see where the company's vision is going. And you're like, okay, wait, they're on to something here. And those are the, like, points in the middle that don't really matter, quote unquote.

That's like the filler episodes in anime. Sure. Sure. It means something to the story. I love that. But you can probably just watch the important ones.

It's like the bonus episodes on the waveform podcast. Oh my god, this is like inception now. We're on a bonus episode. I just felt the momentum shift, I think. You know how on the waveform podcast when they do the bonus episodes? They're not really that important to the story,

but the fans stay in the fans. This is a filler. And you know where we're going as a filler episode. This is the most anime filler episode of all waveform episodes. This is our crossover, dude. This is the baseball episode of Dragon Ball. super right now. I like the draft because this is a really interesting one. That's the unique to sports. The

basketball draft, yes. It's unique to sports. There is no equivalent for this in the tech world. So I'm going to, I'm going to give you a what if. Okay. That might keep it interesting. Because we have, we have these tech companies operating competing against each other and, you know, capitalism is supposed to say that the best products and the best ones win. In sports, if we leave it like that for too long, you're going to get teams that are just so far ahead of other teams that the other, especially newer franchises, will never get any chance to catch up. So here's what we do. After every year, every season, we have a draft.

And the team that was the worst this past year gets the first pick in the draft, roughly. This is an exact science. But they get the highest picks in the draft. And the teams that were really, really, really good, you don't need a bunch more talent. So they'll get the last picks in the draft. Okay. And the draft is drafting among this brand new upcoming talent from college similar to tech companies. Okay.

When they hit 18, right? Basically. Okay. So here's a what if for you. Imagine if the least successful tech companies the last year got the most, the highest picks of all the best college talent going to them. And the most successful teams, the best tech companies in the world, didn't get any of that talent. Yeah. They have to pick the scraps from who's left over.

Just pretend for a minute that money doesn't exist. Yeah. It's almost the exact opposite of what tech does. Because when you graduate college at like top of your class, you. you're probably going to be poached by the biggest, and you're going to want to pick the biggest company because you'll make the most money and go to the thing that's already doing really well.

So it's the opposite. I guess if college players didn't have a draft, they would leave college and be like, oh, the team that just won the championship wants me, I'm going to want to play for the team that won the championship. Maybe this is how we bust up big tech. We institute a draft. And then the lesser companies will become better.

It makes, it's more easy to see in sports because the teams are smaller, and one high talent can have a big impact on winning. But if you imagine essentially the draft from college, upcoming talent in that way in tech, it would be like if the best companies who are the most successful, made the most money, do not have access to the best talent.

They have to do it again next year. With their same talent. Like, best guy out of Sanford's like, I have to go work for Humane. Ouch. But sometimes what happens is all of that talent goes to Humane and then Humane has a great situation. And then he makes it out.

And then HP makes a printer that can work. And you're like, wow. See, we have all this competition. It's an even playing thing again. Yeah. So people like that. And the sports world are really like that it keeps it even and interesting. The worst teams get way better.

Yeah, I mean, it would be cool if, like, you know, instead of Apple having 40% of the RAM supply every single year, if suddenly that went to like an up-income income. Oh, man. Yeah. Maybe that's the way we do the draft. We make it RAM supply. That almost feels like Formula One in terms of like wind tunnel time,

where the worst teams get more tunnel time to develop their cars. I mean, it's sports still, but yeah, exactly. Okay, I like the, what do they call that in Dota? That's a balance patch, basically. Oh, balance? Balance patch. Man, if tech had balance patches?

You know the physics? I don't know how real this is, but you know the like video game slingshot physics where if you're in last place in Mario Kart, you get all the better power-ups? Socialism? It's like that. Yeah, okay.

Socialism? Yeah. So if the team, if you're in last place, here's a weird thing. Okay. And this is kind of a problem in the NBA and in sports. Sometimes someone will intentionally go to last place in Mario Kart to get the better power-ups because they know that that's going to get them back to fast.

Wow. That's a- I don't know why right there. You're a pros-prose pro-year. Explaining it to like your child. Do they do this in basketball? Yeah, they do this in basketball. They will intentionally.

They'll do what's called tanking. Yeah. You tank your season. Shouldn't that be against the rules? So they will have. And they just instituted new rules to stop it. Wait, what is it? The PWHL has an.

awesome role for this actually. So, okay, without getting two into the weeds on it, basically what the, so the NBA has a lottery at the end of the season. Typically, if you're worse, you get a higher chance of getting the number one overall pick. What they're now doing is they're flattening those odds. So they're making it so that the worst teams actually only get like, instead of it used to be like a 25% chance again, the number one pick. The NHL did that. Now you have only like a 10% chance. And then the teams in the middle get a slightly better amount.

And then the teams actually that barely miss the playoffs now get like, an 8% chance of gain the number one pick. So what's that power-up in Mario Kart where you just get like the black thing, the bullet thing? And you just soar across everything. That's like the number one pick in the draft. It's not a guarantee,

but the number one pick in the draft is going to be immensely talented and push you from the... To the middle. To the middle or the track. So there will be a team slash Mario Kart player with more than enough talent and skill

to come in second or third place, but they see that they're not going to win so they just hit the brakes and go all the way to last place. They pick up the bullet and then they go all the way back to second or first. And you're like, you could. Like, that's just so. Your reaction is the general public's reaction to tanking in the NBA. So, you nailed it.

It took them this many years to make that against the rules. They tried to. It's actually hard to force. So initially it was literally like, if you are the last place team, you are the first pick in the draft. Then it was like, okay, I will literally lose all of my games because I want to be the first pick at the draft. They're like, okay, okay, okay. If you are in the bottom five, then we'll have this little lottery system and you'll get

more of a chance of last, the first pick, but you're not going to guarantee first pick. Yeah. And it's still a pretty good chance of first pick if you're in last place, so the teams are still trying to get last place. So they're like, all right. There ever been a circumstance where multiple teams were trying to tank at the same time? Literally this year. Nobody could win because everyone was trying to lose.

Yeah. Is that what the Sixers did? Or are they- They did last year? Yeah. And Ellis is a fan of these? Yes. Wow. Oh, he's watching.

You know. It's on his plane back from vacation listening to this year. It's kind of funny because kind of like in tech and in a lot of other things, the worst thing to do is be like in purgatory in the mid. Yeah. You want to be winning franchise top of your game in your prime like unbeatable. Yeah. Or just bankrupt, wipe it, start it over, right? Because if you're in purgatory like catering and you.

You can't really do anything about it. The draft is like a government bailout. Like you don't want to be a mid-team forever. So a good draft pick could finally change that for you. So a mid-team will tank to try to get a good draft pick. They penalize you if they catch you tanking? Allegedly. Allegedly.

But it's like, hey, billionaire owner. That wasn't great. It was a $50,000 flight. It's like, oh, okay, whatever. This might be, we're going further from tech, but I just want to explain to you guys what the women's hockey league is doing. They do something called the gold plan. Well, once you are mathematically eliminated, then your wins start accumulating points towards the draft pick. And then so every time a team gets eliminated, every win they get after that gets them closer.

That's so smart. So it like incentivizes you to win. Why don't they do that in basketball? Take no, Adam Silver. Come on, man. That's awesome. It's typically good because a lot of late season games are boring.

Are mathematically irrelevant. It'll be like, oh, we've scheduled this out from the beginning of the season, but it turns out this Charlotte Hornets versus Chicago Bulls game is two teams that are already mathematically eliminated and have no reason to win. And so they sit all of their best players, and people will go to the game and pay and show up and get to watch horrible basketball. Or not show up at all, and the arena's empty. Yeah, and it's just a pain.

So that would make those games interesting to watch because those are useful. Yeah, because then they might get a draft pick. That would be... That's a really good idea. Shout out to that leak. Yeah. Yeah, cool.

Cool. Okay. Should we take a break? We've gone way into the ground. I assumed you were putting a break in there somewhere. Well, I forgot. Here is a natural spot for a break. Okay.

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please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor. Free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. I'm Seth Matlands. My new show, Creator, Destroy, Reimagining, marketing explores how every decision a company makes, not just the marketing ones, but the HR, IR, pricing, org design, and planning ones, the ones most don't consider marketing at all, contribute to either creating value or destroying it. Each week, I sit down with CMOs, CEOs,

founders, cultural thinkers, the people building, breaking, and reimagining how businesses grow or don't for conversations about what creates value and what destroys it. It's a business show, it's a marketing show. The creator destroys the show that argues. They've always been the same thing from the box media podcast network and the wisdom is company new episodes drop weekly on youtube and your favorite podcast app welcome back i have a question what does the coach do yes okay so like you know mike brown you know he's the nix coach he coach the sacramento king before this yes got booted off the sacramento king's wow um ball ball knowledge just saying you know how many teams who's been fired from, like half a dozen. It's crazy.

And it's because it was too good. There has to be, I think there's a tech analogy for that too. The top team is like trade town. That's just every employee of a major tech company. Look at their LinkedIn. They look like a coach in the NBA. That goes somewhere else. Yeah. Tesla, Apple, Google. Because my question about the coach is like, you know, they like call timeouts and then they talk to the players. But like, what are they talking to them about? Like, how does this work?

Yeah. So the coach knows the range of talents to the players really. well. And before every game, they do the hard work of looking at what the other team is really good at and how their team compares and what they should do to beat the other team. So the players, they come to the table with their skills and they're like, yeah, I'm going to dunk it. And they're like, all right, you're good at dunking it. Okay. I'm going to put you in positions where you get a lot of dunks. Okay. But if you're playing against a team that's really good at defending dunks, they're like, all right, you're going to get rebounds and pass it out to the shooter because they're bad at defending shooters.

So they're the brains orchestrating what the players are doing in theory. Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about like a technology, if we go to the hardware side, they're like the logic board or whatever. It is here with a bunch of agents. The orchestrator. All the players think they're building this incredible thing, but they need the person from outside to wrangle them back in, right?

Like, Snapchat could have used a coach to tell them those glasses are ridiculous. Yeah. Yeah. Like, okay, so the Snapchat CEO in this analogy, who clearly is the one that thought those were a good idea. Well, I don't know about that. You have to wear them. It seems like it. I don't know.

But so whoever the person was that was pushing for the Snapchat spectacles the most. Yeah. The specs. The specs. That person is like a basketball player that needs to be wrangled in and needs to be told you're shooting too much and you're not making your shots. So we're going to bench you. Okay. So that's the purpose of a coach.

So that's like the board? Sure, maybe. Because the board can switch out the, can kbash it. Can switch out the CEO if they're not doing a good job. Yeah, kind of. Yeah. This is not a pure one-to-one because there's also some way to say that like the coach could be, the coach and the assistant coaches could be like a CEO, C-O, CMO, that sort of thing.

There's an assistant coach too. There's like multiple assistants. A bunch. What do they do? So Mike Brown famously this year was very, very collaborative. That was part of why they hired him. He was very open to listening to his assistant coaches that focused on different, you know, areas of the game. So in pure basketball terms, the Knicks had like an assistant that was more focused on the offense.

They had an assistant that was more focused on the defense. Okay. They had another guy that would sit on the second row that literally his whole job was, should we review this play or not? Because you get to challenge plays. Oh. If you think that the referees got the call wrong. Yeah. And the Knicks had a super high conversionary on successful challenges of bad calls.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's like their legal team actually. Should we appeal this lawsuit? Yeah. It's like, is the lawsuit worth pursuing? Yes or no. That's basically they have an assistant that's like that. That's like their legal counsel.

Yeah. Okay. But yeah, the coach makes decisions that it leads to the overall success. And cycles people in and out. So a board is probably a good thing, you know, brings in turn. over, has some churn, you know, to make sure that things stay fresh. Manages egos. Players doing pretty well, but kind of getting tired.

Hey, I know you're good, but you're getting tired. Let me put the bench player on. They also set the roadmap in a way because, so for example, the Knicks this year played a style of defense under their old coach where you would try to force people to the perimeter to try to get them away from the inside of the. So that they could get more two-pointers because Jalen Bruns is good at two-pointers? Well, so this, I'm talking about what they would do on defense. So the Knicks would try to make the other team not get to the inside for easy shots, right?

Right. Oh, I see. And then the Knicks, during their worst stretch this year, tried something new and said, what if we defended the perimeter a lot, the three-point shot, and let teams get to the inside? And then teams were just getting layups left and right, and it was not pretty. So then they switched their scheme back. Okay. They didn't have like a-out side. Like a Wembe.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Alex just broke a little bit. The Spurs. They didn't have anyone to flagrant foul their other team. Yeah.

Spurs, you might know, have a player who's 7 foot 6 with really long arms called Victor Wenbighama. And so they're in defensive player of the year. And so their entire defensive strategy, if you were smart, the coaches would go, hey, really close out on anyone trying to shoot a three-pointer. Make them stop pump fake and try to dribble and drive for a two because we've got an alien in there who will just block everything. Is it a pump fake where you pretend to shoot and then you don't? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, Steph Curry does that a lot. Yes. He's very good at it. It's like when you're about to ship a product, when you don't. Like air power. It's like the head fake. It's like the street life manifesto of them.

We're releasing. Oh, you got pump fakes, bro. Yeah. David just broke inside. Okay. Okay, speaking of GTA. GTA. Rocks are, they are the best at pump fakes.

That's true. Look at this trailer. Look at this trailer. You mentioned the ref. Yes. So I went to a basketball game with you. Yeah. Well, no, we watched it.

We watched it on TV. On TV. I yelled at the refs a lot. I lost my voice. So there were multiple points in the game where the ref would come out and he would talk about the type of foul. So can you explain the types of fouls that exist? Yeah.

Wow, it's so good. That's literally the next thing on the document. Oh, nice. Are you sure you didn't read this? I'm not on the doc. That's crazy. There's two types of fouls. All right.

So there's different types of fouls and violations. Yeah. So we'll start with just a foul. Okay. So a foul is when a player prevents another player from taking and or making a shot. Isn't that what you're supposed to do? Well, we should start with the fact of basketball. Basketball is a, quote, non-contact sport.

Yes. Oh. So in the basic sense, you can guard, but you can't make too much contact, and that would be a foul. Unless you're Victor Wembe. Yes. If you make too much contact, it's a foul. Unless you're victor. The referees are the ones who decide how much contact is too much contact.

And the thing is especially with you. shooting, you're allowed to affect them however you can without touching their body while they're shooting. Unless you're Victor Vemianama. Yeah, so unless you're Victor Wemianma. Anyway, but so the basic rule of fouling is if someone is trying to shoot, you can do whatever you can without touching their arms. Okay. You can also touch the ball. That's legal. If you just touch the ball, that's called all ball. You hit the ball. That's a block. Nice. Yes. Nice block. It's a block. Right. But if you can also touch the ball, that's legal. But if you hit their arm, then you're affecting their ability to shoot. And that's a foul.

Okay. Right? I feel like it's got to be more than just your arms because if I just punch someone in the gun. Well, no, that's, I'm trying to make it as simple as I can, but yes, if you do anything, that's a Wembe foul. It's any level of contact with the player. Yeah. Yeah. Like breaking their ACL while they're shooting, while they're dribbling, anything.

It's obviously more important to not foul when they're shooting because if you foul someone while they're shooting, then they go to the free throw line to make up for it. Okay. So if I go to take a shot and you don't foul and I make it, great. If I miss, oh well. But if I go to take a shot and you foul me, now I can go take those two free throws because I probably would have made it if you didn't foul me. So if I think someone's got a lot of bugs, foul them because they suck it for you. You could also think of this a bit like a data breach where a company goes, whoopsie, we accidentally gave your credit card information away. You can join a class action suit and get $5 from us now, and that's your free throw.

That's why it's only right. Oh, yeah, okay. So, yeah. Yeah. One point. Okay, yeah, $5. One point. Yeah, $5.

Each point in the NBA is worth $5. Now, the thing that you're talking about, which is the referee going to the table and figuring out what type of foul it is. Yeah. Is if you foul someone so hard and so egregiously, you break the rule so hard, it is more than a normal foul. Yeah. Then they'll penalize you even more than just free throws. So if someone goes to shoot or whatever. and I punched you in the chest or whatever Andrew said.

If you do what Wemmy would do, an average flight. That would be called not just a common foul, but that's a flagrant foul. And there's actually flagrant foul level one or level two. Oh, there's two levels of flagrant foul? The penalty is worse. A flagrant foul level one is free throws and you get the ball again. Oh, you get to start with the ball after. And a flagrant foul level two is free throws and the ball again and the player that committed it gets immediately tossed from the game.

For the rest of the game? For the rest of the game. It's a red card, baby. It's a red card. But you're allowed to have a player sub in for them, right? On the court. Yeah, yeah. Red card, you lose the player's spot.

Wait, Adam, have you ever watched soccer before? Wow. It's called football, actually. Woody? Wait, so if you lose, what do you have to do to get a red card? That would be the flagrant level two. Flagran level two. So sometimes...

You just have one less player the whole game? No, no, not in basketball. That's only for soccer. Oh, okay. Soccer, you do lose a player for the whole rest of the game. Right. So sometimes there's some, super heavy level of contact and the player

falls over. It looks like he's hurt and they called their regular foul but they're like well actually maybe that was a lot so they'll go and review it look at the replay and decide we're going to upgrade that or not to a flagrant. A large part of flagrant fouling too is that they determined that it was not a basketball play

that it was just with the intent of hurting someone basically. So the tech equivalent would be like see it's a little different in tech again but there are rules there are laws. There are laws. There are laws. There are laws.

There are laws. There you go. And these companies are supposed to follow these laws. But sometimes they will do things that are against the rules and they should be penalized for it. And that will come in the form of like, you broke the law. Now we're going to sue you. You'll get sued. Yeah. BMW cheating on gas emissions.

For example. Yeah. That might even be considered a flagrant foul. Sometimes the things that they do are so obviously cheating and so. obviously against the rules that they get penalized above and beyond, almost to make an example of them. This happens all the time in tech with companies. That would be like a flagrant foul. Yeah, okay. It should really affect you. So physically, what's the difference between flagrant file level one and level two? Often it's just intent or follow through. They'll say things like wind up impact and follow

through or excessive. It actually carries sort of a similar thing to like manslaughter versus murder. Yeah. It's like, were you just reckless or did you have? malice aforethought about what you were going to do. Did you put a, did you, was there a bug in the software or did you put a tracker in the software? Yeah. When Motorola had the affiliate. Was that a whoopsie or was that a, we're trying to make a lot of money. Exactly.

Okay. And so that is the tech equivalent. Okay. So you, in theory, the teams play by the rules the whole time, but it's competition. Like, they're going to be pushing the rules. They're going to be pushing the limits all the time. Fowls are expected to happen. Yeah.

We would hope that the referees. accurately set the line in the same place every time so that the players know exactly how aggressive it can be. Sometimes they don't. And then refs you suck is one of the chance that sports fans will say. Because they don't get it right every time. Am I correct that if you get three flagrant fouls in a season,

you get kicked off for the rest of the season? No. There's a couple of rules around fouls. If one player fouls six times in one game... Regular foul. Six regular fouls in one game. They're out for the rest of the game. Okay.

Yet that's the limit for regular fouls. Okay. If one player has two flagrant penalty ones, they're ejected for the rest of the game. For the rest of the game. If a player has a single flagrant penalty two, they're ejected for the rest of the game. But the other thing that I was explaining, I know why you're asking this because I explained this to you the other day. Yeah. But basically, in the postseason especially, there's, you get a certain number of points.

What's the postseason? The postseason is the playoffs. That's like September October. After the regular season is done, then you play for the championship. That's called the postseason. You're going to have to explain those things. That's busy season. Yeah, it's busy season.

When we have our iPhone events, our Pigslist. That's our playoffs. Yeah, our playoffs, which is our analogy from Yuddle, watch it'll. But yeah, so basically in the postseason during the most important games during the playoffs. So the postseason is the playoffs? Is the playoffs? Those are, yeah. And the playoffs are when the Eastern Conference or the Western Conference compete?

against each other and then the winner of each conference faces each other in the finals, which is why the Knicks just faced the spurs. And all the points you get in the regular season, only some teams make it to the playoffs. So in the regular season, you're trying to make it to the playoffs, then matching happens,

and then you're slowly working. And then you all play each other and then figure out who the true best team is. Okay. Wait for them. So as it relates to fouls, in the postseason, the playoffs, synonyms,

If you get a certain number of flagrant fouls in the postseason, then you get suspended for an additional game. So Wembe should have been suspended for an additional game against the Knicks because he committed numerous flagrant fouls. But we'll call him like Open AI. They get to steal your data, train their models on stuff illegally. And yet somehow there's just a government blind eye to it. And they never really get penalized. Get over the number of flagrant files. Well, he should have.

He should have had a number of more flagrant fouls. It was like, open AI, did you flagrant file steal all those videos from the TV? So are you like, what? So the play where he shoved Brunton into the ground was a basketball play, is what you're telling. This was a referee issue that you have. Yes, it's a referee issue. It's a regulatory issue. If you are, this is, and we'll get into fandoms in a second.

If you are a fan of one of these tech companies slash teams, then you may interpret. Maybe you guys next to each other was a bad idea. You may interpret the lawsuits that hit them a little bit differently than if you are not. not, oh, I see. All I'm saying is your dad and I are fans of the same tech company in this analogy. So speak carefully, pal. I'm just saying. There are a lot of people who are, especially like, I try to consider myself neutral.

I don't have a horse in the race. I've seen lots of fowls that I would think are flagrins that don't get calls from both teams. But that's up to the refs. So the referees are humans instead of machines. And so they almost act like a hand on the scale a little. bit sometimes where it can feel like they're being paid off certain referees are are almost like only judging one way they're only enforcing the rules for one company yeah like the whole series yeah it feels kind of weird uh there's famously a couple nix pilled so yeah there's famously a referee

David's a bigger nix fan than me at this one it's crazy there's famously a referee I'm trying to remember the stat but Chris Paul is like oh for 12 against Scott foster or something like every time this one referee has referee this one player in a playoffs game, he has lost. Similar to every time this one judge judges this one company in a lawsuit, they lose every time. And it's like, okay, they're a judge. They're supposed to be impartial. But they're not. And every case should be unique. But damn, oh, and 12 against this judge? This seems kind of like a vendetta at this point. Have they ever charged any of the refs for like? Oh, famously, a ref in the 2000s was busted for betting on games and fixing games.

That's probably happening more now, right? It's going to start happening way more. Actually, in Coffee Zill, it's not refs, but players are like doing stuff like this. There were players that were like talking about betting websites. Yeah. There's some who are like, I'm going to go out in the first quarter with like a foot injury. So bet that I'm that. That happened.

There was an NBA player within the last couple years that got banned for life for doing that. He was a very low level player. And he would, he would, he had a discord group of all things. And would put, he would be like, guys, bet the under on my rebounds today. He's like, I'm going to check in for 30 seconds and then say my tummy hurts and tell myself out. That's insane. He put that in writing. Yeah.

That's a good coffee zone. In a discord, dude. It's crazy. It's so stupid. So anyway, yeah, we hope for the refs to be just like judges, impartial, but they're not. That is interpreted very much based on where you are. If you're maybe working for companies. I do feel like we should.

This is going so long already. I feel like we should start moving. But I have one other violation I want to highlight because I'm so proud of my analogy. Okay. Okay. So there's a thing called a shot clock violation. Okay.

Have you noticed when you're watching basketball, David, since you're a huge basketball fan now? That every time the team gets the ball, there's 24 seconds that starts counting down. I didn't know it was 24, but I've seen the clock going on. Right. So there's when you get the ball, when you're on offense, when you're trying to score the ball,

you have 24 seconds to take a shot that at minimum hits the rim. Right. That's what resets the shot. lock each time. That's a shot. To 24? Or if you get your rebound and resets it to 14. So you have 24 seconds every time you have the ball. Every time you try to hit it. For simplicity, yes. For simplicity, yes.

And it's four if you're ahead so you don't just keep playing keep away. Four seconds? No, no, no. Like if you're the team that is winning, then you can't just play keep away. Yeah, you can't just hold the ball forever. And if you don't do it, they just give it to the other team. Yes. So that you nailed it. That's what I was about to explain. So if you go 24 seconds and you don't shoot, then you give the ball to the other team. You've turned the ball over.

That's called the turnover. Oh. Right. So my analogy for this that I'm, I think looking through, this is my favorite one. Apple has committed a 24-second violation with Apple intelligence. They said they were going to release it. And they took way too long to release it. And now they have been forced to hand the ball over to Google Gemini.

Wow. That's good. Wow. That is good. The shock lock violation on Apple. Because it. Yeah. Street like needs a shock.

Rockstar Rockstar You've committed numerous 24 second violations I could do the rock star one And our audience would love it But street light Hurt's David Moore

There have been at least two comments About my streetlight manifest Well those two people If they made it this far Are very upset Street Light Manifesto hurts David more What's the shot clock violation

on the roadster? That's also a shock Yeah Tesla has committed a shot clock I think they've committed about I think they committed about five in a row Yeah Yeah. Okay, I have one question. Yes. At least. So you know, there were a couple instances during this series where the ball was like over the hoop and then a guy knocked it over and he got in trouble for knocking it off. I know. Why do you get in trouble for that?

I know the term. Explain. Goaltending. Correct. Yes. Goaltending. Is it once the ball is on the trajectory down, you are then not allowed to stop the ball? Yeah. Why? So when it's it? Because players could just reach over the net every time. Because they're so tall. They could just. jump up and not going to win. So you could just... Okay. Is that considered like a foul type thing? It counts as a made shot. Breaking the rule.

Oh, it counts as a made shot. Yeah. Yeah. So if a player goes to shoot it and it goes up and starts coming down towards the basket and you reach up and hit it when it's supposed to give it a chance to go in, that is a breaking the rule's violation. Yeah. They will count that as a made shot.

They'll count that as a ship product. Oh, they give them the point? You get the full two points or three points. So you really don't want to commit that violation because you just give give them a shift product. So, but if you hit it out of the way while it's heading towards the apex of the parabola, then it's okay. That's a block.

That's cool. Yeah. Similarly, if the ball is NBA specific, bounces off the rim and is still over the rim, like in the cylinder of the rim, you're not allowed to touch it. Okay. Until it leaves the cylinder. And actually, in international basketball, you are allowed to. Yeah.

Really? That's a weird. It's such a weird discrepancy of how basketball is played around the world. Yeah, that's the EU. Oh my God. That's USBC on iPhones. Is being able to hit it off. But then sometimes the rules from international come back to the NBA. They have not adjusted.

I think it's more like in the EU there's different power plugs. So like every power plug here in the U.S. we kind of know is basically the two prong or the three prong. And then you go to Europe and it's like, oh, that's kind of still a two prong that's a little different. They have a slightly different rule set. But it's mostly the same. And there is. Same principles. We're not even really getting into this, but there's robust other forms of basketball in college basketball, international basketball, multiple international leagues around the world.

Yeah. And in many of the leagues, it's played so slightly different. Okay. We're mostly doing NBA rules here. Yeah, but NBA rules is where we're sticking to. That is goaltending that you speak out. Goaltending. Yeah.

I don't know if there's a tech equivalent of goaltending. Like the 24th second violation is pretty obvious, but fouls are pretty obvious. But I think goaltending is just another like breaking the rules thing where it's pretty clear the referee. can see it. You will get sued. Is there anything else small like that that you're not allowed to do? Yeah, there's little things. You're not allowed to kick the ball. If your foot makes contact with the ball, it's a kick

ball violation. You're not allowed to stop dribbling and then start dribbling again. Or move without dribbling. That's either travel or double dribble. Unless you're OG and Ninovi. Yeah. Deer and Fox got to double dribble right in the middle of a finals game and they didn't call it for some reason. You see on the spurs. Uh-huh.

All right, now you guys understand the game. We'll talk about some lore after the break. We'll be right back. This episode is brought to you by L'Oreal Group. Beauty is a powerful force that moves us. That's why L'Oreal Group has built a business that is inclusive at its heart with 100% of its brands championing diversity. With 25,000 professional opportunities for people under 30 worldwide

and 54% of leading positions held by women, diversity is a strength that helps L'Oreal Group create the best beauty products for all people. Visit laurel.com to learn more. All right, welcome back. I think now we've basically covered the rules and violations of the game enough that the last thing we should do is fill you in on some of the lore

that got us to this point in the modern NBA. And there's so many things we could talk about but I think the ones that have the best tech equivalents are the ones that we should give you guys. I'm going to start with one of my favorite. LeBron James. Have you heard of LeBron James? I know that guy, yeah.

Great. They call him the king. Do you know how old he is? Forty-five. He's really. He's over 40. He's over 40. He nailed it. He is still, to this day, at 41, one of the top 20 best players on the planet, I would say.

That is crazy because he came in as a rookie in, I'm going to get this wrong, 2007? 2003? 2003? He was drafted first pick of the 2003 NBA draft. So LeBron James, straight from high school. With the longevity of his career and being one of the best, is essentially, like the iPhone, came out a really long time ago,

was one of the best, and many others competitively have come and gone since then. And maybe at certain peaks could have been considered slightly better than him, but he was always one of the best, and here we are,

two decades later, still one of the best. A lot of his competition, bankrupt, totally gone. LG, HTC, essential. Come and gone. Nokia. Yeah.

Nokia. And come back and probably gone again. Blackberry, bro. Blackberry? were big. So why didn't he win the championship? So he is, I mean it's a team sport, so you can't win every year by yourself. But he is from an era where when he first came around, there were like these big dynasties of teams of the past. Almost all of the players that were actually, sorry, every single player that was active when he was drafted has retired. Okay. Every single one.

Has Yao Ming retired? Yeah. He's retired. He played against Yomeng, though. And there's, and, you know, when you look at that time in the past, it was like, oh, BlackBray was really big, no, Key was really big, Samsung was kind of starting to get big. And you look at all the waves of all the things that have happened since then. Yeah. And now he's part of the modern NBA and the landscape is totally different and he's still one of the best. It's kind of insane, his longevity. Yeah, okay.

Some people call him a goat. There will always be debates about it just like the iPhone, but that is LeBron James's career. Do you want to know a fun fact? Sure. LeBron James has been playing elite level NBA basketball four years longer than the iPhone has existed. That's insane. That's crazy. So it's literally more, he literally has been around longer than the iPhone.

Taco Tuesday keeping him going. Taco Tuesday. Isn't this that like he's played against 40% of the NBA ever or something? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like 40% of all NBA players that have ever played he's playing. What? He's so good.

I imagine if he had kids, probably be really good in the NBA. He has one. And he has a second one who maybe will make the NBA. Yeah, is there a tech equivalent of that? If, like, Apple had, like, a sub-brand that spun off and, like, became another crazy smartphone company? But there's a...

There's a... There's nothing in CMF. I was thinking nothing in CMF, yeah. Yeah, but nothing isn't, like, LeBron level. We already put... Who's the CMF phone pro two? Oh, was that... CJ McCall?

CJ, yeah. There's also, like, operas. and Reelby and Vivo and... Yeah, you know, that's a bad analogy. Subbrands are way too easy to make in tech. It's impossible to have a son in the NBA. Is it really? He's done it.

It's insane. Wait, what about... Hey, Jalen Brunson. Jaylen Brunson. Sorry, it's impossible to have a son in the NBA while you were still in the NBA. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was the only one that ever do that, I think.

Jaylonson did that? No, no, no, no. LeBron playing with his own son. Playing with his own son. In the NBA. On the same team. They're on the same team. They're on the same team.

Through him and Alioop in a guy. Yeah, I was about saying LeBron is thrown an alley-up to his son. To his son. In a real NBA game? Yeah. That's unbelievable. I'll show you the clip after this. That's so cool.

It's so cool. Wow. There's also, wait, can you turn your computer towards him? There's my favorite NBA photo ever is LeBron recording the All-Star game on like a nextel phone back in the day. That was LeBron. That doesn't even look like him. His rookie year. That's how long he's met.

That's him as a child. Before his facial hair. Yeah. Damn. Yeah. That's crazy. So, yeah, good stuff. Okay.

So if we want to jump more. to the current NBA. Which is where lore drop. Yeah. But this is where I get to speak the praises of of the New York Knicks.

Hasn't happened yet. First time. This is where it starts. I just need, is there any lore about Mike Bibby? I didn't write any down, but. Make something up.

Wait, Mike Bibby is awesome. Are you aware of what Mike Bibby's up to these days? Don't. Is he a cryptos camera? No. He retired as like a very

like, a very like, live NBA point guard and then randomly just decided. to get mega jacked. Yeah, he's, dude. Wait, what?

You're Mike Bibi. The last time? You're jacked it. The last time I saw Mike Bibi, he was really, really lanky. No, look up a picture of Mike Bibi in the current day. He randomly just decided to get like mega jacked, dude. Okay, I also need to know about the guy that did the Palm Phone. Steph Curry.

Yeah. What about him? I just need to know his lore because I feel like he's legendary. is he has a tech product? Did I put Steph Curry down? Steph Curry has changed the game, and I do want to think of a good product that has changed the game

in the way that Steph Curry has changed. Let's brainstorm it. So what's a product that existed for a long time, and then someone came along and redid it a little bit and completely changed it for the future. The iPhone. Or Apple Silicon is another interesting one. Apple Silicon.

Or electric cars. I would say Hyundai specifically were like, they're doing decent, but they weren't, and then like they kind of made a pivot with their EVs. Yeah, I like Tesla Model S. Okay. For, so we had cars for forever.

Everybody could make cars. We had a whole competitive landscape, lots of lore, lots of cars. Somebody comes along and makes an electric car that's actually effective. Yeah. Because electric car is reputation before it wasn't all that. But then the Tesla Model S comes along. Yeah. And then you look at post-Tesel Model S and there is a vibrant landscape of electric cars.

Right. Everyone is doing an electric car. True. Okay. That is Steph Curry. Before Steph Curry, there were some threes. there were some teams that had sharpshooters, Pages Stoyakovich.

You might have heard that name before. Pesia. Also on the king. He's a threes, exactly. I'm just saying that because you've said that. That's like Stoiaqvich. But you look at post-Stef Curry. Entire teams build their entire strategy

around multiple people being as good at three-point shooting as possible on their team. It is just a different landscape now that he's done. It's actually, it really works with the Tesla thing too because the Tesla Model S, I don't know if anyone would ever say like this is the greatest car of all time. but they might say that this is the most influential car of all time. And I think Steph doesn't often get talked about as the greatest basketball player of all time. But I think most hardcore basketball fans would say that he's the most influential basketball player of all time. Of all time.

Yes. Wow. Because he completely, by his mastery of three-point shooting, changed how the entire league plays basketball. But the Knicks don't really focus on threes as much. They do. Every single team now shoots way more threes in the game. I felt like the Knicks missed almost every three they shot. Well, the good thing was that the Knicks were adaptable,

but they set a lot of team three-point records. They set some playoff three-point records in the earlier rounds and stuff. They shot a lot of threes this year. The Spurs set a first-half three-point record in the game that they lost to the Knicks because they stopped making three. Oh. Because they're chokers and losers. They would have like one or two players that can shoot threes.

So you would have like a whole team of people that just played regularly and then one guy that shot the three. And now it's like the whole team is built around people that can shoot threes. And even another thing that's interesting about this is that now gets you to a lot of the comparisons between old NBA and new NBA, where it almost feels like a totally different sport. Like when you look at cars today and how crazy they are versus like the record setting cars of the past were goaded for their time. Right. But it's hard to compare them with modern cars. Because they're so different.

Exactly. That's kind of what like the record books look like today. Like you've heard of Michael Jordan. A lot of people consider him the greatest player of all time. He didn't shoot threes, like very much, and wasn't very good at them. And so a lot of people would argue if you put Michael Jordan in today's NBA, he wouldn't be one of the best players. A lot of other people argue, well, he was all mental.

He would have figured out a way to be good at threes. He did add threes to his bag late in his career. Very, very late. But not like modern NBA. Yeah, actually. For the second three-pid, he was a much better three-point shooter. Michael Jordan was freakishly athletic and basically made every two-pointer you looked at. And was also the most psychotically driven athlete of all time, probably.

He famously would make up narratives against him. Steve Jobs. Yeah, he is sort of Steve Jobs. Because he would be like, he would be like, this guy said that I'm trash and that he can guard me and whatever. And it would be like one passing comment that a guy made five years. prior that was like, yeah, I think I could try to guard Michael Jordan. He thinks he can stop me. He thinks he can stop me and he can't. So he would just create motivational energy for himself. Like there's, if you watch the documentary, the last dance, they talk about this a lot.

With Michael Jordan making up fake narratives against himself. And I took that personally. Yeah, yeah. Literally the meme and I took that personally. That's a Michael Jordan meme? Yes. Okay. That was just him all the time. Okay, okay, okay. Now he owns a NASCAR team, right? Yeah, his post-MBA career is a whole lot. He owned a basketball team at one point, too. He owned the Hornets for a minute. Who's real bad at that? No crypto stamps as far as we now.

He sells sneakers. I do think Steve Jobs is a really good... Because a lot of the upside is like, savant, possibly the goat. Nobody could do what he did. But also some of his showcomings were kind of insane. And maybe this is like post-career Michael Jordan, but like one of the worst owners. Probably because he's bad at judging talent. He's just like, hey, why can't you jump over the other guys?

guy like I did, like just be better. So he's a bad owner. That sounds like Steve Jobs to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, honestly. I know this is physically impossible, but just do it. Like, just be better. Like, just be better. And that's what MJ asked of everyone around him.

Wow. At all times. And that's why teammates did not love him. They talk about him now with reverence because they won championships, but they hated playing with him at the time. Just like everyone that works with Steve Jobs. Yeah. I have another one I want to make an analogy, a technology.

I don't have this fully fleshed out, but this one right here. Oh, we were trying to figure this out, and we wanted your opinion. Okay, I want to try something. Yeah. Okay. The goal is to ship products, as many products as possible. Sure.

There are record books for the most products anyone has ever shipped in a single bay, a. A.K.A. the most points any player has ever scored in a single game. Okay, yeah. Didn't we talk about this on the pot? I think we did. Okay. Famously, you know, NBA teams today are scoring roughly 100 to 120 points a game.

I was going to ask if that's gone up over time. Yes. With the three-point revolution, higher scoring. And the shock-clock era, et cetera. The most points any one player has ever scored in a single game was back in the day, this man named Wilts Chamberlain scored 100 points by himself in a single game. Against? Against.

Against. Yeah. It's against the Knicks. Now, there's a lot of lore around this because, one, there's no video of this. But there is tons of eyewitness accounts and radio. And it's definitely happened. it's just a bit of a mythological performance. Oh, interesting.

And there's a little bit of conspiracy about fudging the scorekeeping. They get him to 100. Yeah. But the idea is this was one of the most dominant players of all time, but it's the 1960s. So what equivalent, it's kind of like in tech, it would be like the fastest car of that time. It would be like Jesse Owens or something. Yeah. And you're like, that's not tech, but that's like a different sport.

But the fastest thing of that time, the fastest computer of that time, time was so much faster than every other computer. It's like, wow, that clearly is record beating and et cetera. A computer the size of a house with one megabyte of RAM. Let's say the first time they hit one gigahertz. I think the U.S. government put like a sanction on, like an export sanction on the first computer that hit one gigahertz because they were so scared of it like going to China or whatever. That sounds about like Will Chamberlain and this piece.

That sounds like mythos right now. That's basically, probably. Yeah. Nobody has gotten anywhere near 100 points in a game. And if you look at the record books, most of the top 50 performances for most points ever in a game are also Wilts Chamberlain. He also had like 70 something. He had a season where he averaged over 50. Yes, which is impossible in today's NBA.

So this really is like this record book is like filled with this one guy from the 60s. And today, this year, there was a player who got 83. which is the second most anyone has ever scored in a game. And it's the closest anyone's gotten in a while. And so it was technically a legendary performance, but it was just by this one guy. Was that Luca? No, it's a guy who doesn't really have any other records.

You might not even have heard of him. His name is Bam. Adabio. You've said that. We talked about it. I think we did it explaining that in tech terms as a segment one. Right. And so when we explained it as if it was like,

I forgot what we said, but it would be like if the LG wing shipped like 50 million phones or something. It's just like this crazy. You're like, well, this doesn't seem right, but I guess it is record breaking. So congrats. Yeah, it was an anomaly. And his team, once he got to like 65, 70, 75 was like just giving the ball. We got to try to get this record.

And that was the closest anyone's ever gotten. Was the other team trying to stop them at that point? Or did they just kind of do this? So anytime anyone is near setting a record, everyone is trying to stop you from setting the record against you because he also got a little bit of help from the referees he shot about 40 free throws in that game what yeah yeah that's crazy they're free take them yeah if you get fouled a lot you got to make the free throw yeah you don't just get and i think he made about 30 free throws on his way to 83 points yeah so yeah it's hard to come up with a tech analogy for that but uh the the third

most points of all time was Kobe 81 another legend everybody respects to 81 wow so in one game in one single game, which is crazy. There's a lot of career highs right around the 70 mark, but those are, those are legendary iconic performances. Wilt, bam, Kobe. What was Kobe specifically good at that made him so legendary? Kobe was. He was like a Michael Jordan clone with all the sliders set to like 90%.

Okay, 96%. Yeah. Depending on the day. 90 to 96% depending on the day. But he basically modeled his entire game personality. everything after Jordan. Okay. Is there a Steve Jobs equivalent to that?

Is there like a 96% Steve Jobs, like also a psycho, but just a little bit less Sam Alman? Like in the current era. Yeah. Sam Alton. Really? Okay. I mean, I don't know, but. I mean, who else is like ruthless?

Like, I think Sam Alton's pretty ruthless because he just lies about everything. But also, like, gets to the point of like, everyone outside of he thinks you're a savant and sees all of the massive change. I don't think anyone thinks that of Sam Altman? Because Kobe, Kobe has a much better basketball reputation than Sam Altman has a tech reputation. Yeah, I would say so, too. So, yeah.

Maybe like, um... I guess we don't really know until Sam Altman's done, though, because the same thing with Steve Jobs where it was, like, people at the time, like, didn't necessarily love working with him, but now we'll idolize him. What about, like, Linus Torvald? That's a little more niche, but yeah. Like, very positive reputation. Yeah, generally, but he's, like, can be mean.

I think that Michael Jordan Steve Jobs thing is perfect because in the moment, he was like levitating. Like everybody understood that what this guy was doing was only something he could do. And then it would come out to people who know more ball or like,

it's kind of hard to work with this guy. But he will ruthlessly get you across the finish line because he's a psycho. Right. And you're like, all right, yep, it worked. So it's like a CEO

that they pull in when the current CEO is not working just to like get you across the finish line. Maybe? I don't know if that's a tech thing. Yeah, like sometimes. Like an interim CEO?

Yeah, like a new term. Oh, interesting. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know if there's a Kobe equivalent in tech. But that was what Kobe was. So if you could find a tech CEO that's like 90 to 95 percent. Steve Jobs. I have a bad one.

Yeah. Elon. Oh. Maybe old Elon. Yeah. That almost is new Elon is not. It's kind of even hard to compare. He's not winning in the way that Steve Jobs.

Right. He's winning in a different way. He's winning in a different way. 2015 Elon with Tesla maybe, just Tesla Elon maybe. is Kobe when people kind of saw him as a safa at the time interesting okay what's the next legend I was going to talk about the current New York Knicks real quick so I think I have a pretty good analogy that matches up actually with an exactly with a tech thing right so let's to wrap up talk about the best and worst teams of each conference right now right so we'll talk about the New York

Knicks first I think I'm uniquely qualified to talk about this let's go nix next in five Let's talk about Apple Silicon. Okay. Right? Apple Silicon comes out in 2020. Yeah. Apple decides to put everything in their own hands. They're going to make their own system on a chip.

They're not going to rely on Intel anymore, right? Yeah. Entire system on a chip. It works with Apple hardware. And then all of a sudden, now it has completely redefined what computers are capable of, honestly. Like, not to praise Apple too much and get accused of being a fanbook. It's true, though. It is true.

It removed all the fragmentation. made everything, they are designing their entire system from the ground up. Another thing that happened in 2020, the New York Knicks could have a kind of a different way. Hired Leon Rose

to be their president of basketball operations, right? Okay. So while they were way worse than Apple and years prior to that, and way worse than Intel Max, because Intel Max were still good computers, the NICs were not a good basketball. Yeah, the I-9 one was kind of...

Yeah, I guess kind of like right before the NICs hired. Leon, they were like the butterfly keyboard I-9. Putting in the freezer to cool it down kind of- Not great. Yeah, so they were not doing great. Things were fragmented. Things were not working well.

Sure. They hire Leon Rose, and he made his mission to build a cohesive team like an M-CHIP. Okay. He prioritized first teammates that play for each other, guys that are interested in working together, being collaborative. The power of friendship? The power of friendship.

Wow. With Jalen Brunson, McHale Bridges, Josh Hart, college teammates, all that. So they were college teammates? They were. I already knew this, but I'm just for the audience. Yes, they were college team. What college? Wow.

Well college. UC Santa Cruz. No. Philanova? Where the heck is that? The Nova Knicks. Philly. It's a pretty big school.

It's a very big school. I'm from California. All right. Well, anyway. So the Knicks make it back to the playoffs. in 2021 for the first time in almost a decade. They signed Jalen Brunson in 2022. Eventually brings in a ton of cohesive players,

builds them around Jalen Brunson, and makes a perfect team that plays for each other and wins to the power of friendship, much like Apple System on a chip. So there's a different guy that does the team organizations that's not the coach. Yes. He's called the president of basketball operations.

There's a general manager? There's also a general manager. In basketball, it depends on how you, want your team to run. Some teams, their highest guys, the general manager, other teams,

they go, well, we want someone above the general manager. So we'll have the president of basketball operations and a general manager and whatever. The Knicks have a general manager, basically, yeah. The NICs have...

President of basketball operations sounds like a title you make up as a six-year-old when they ask you what you want to do. I want to be the president of the NICS someday. Yeah, that's me. But anyway,

now the New York NICs are NBA champions. before Joelle M. B. has ever made a conference finals. So they all played basketball together in college? Not all the next, but three of them. Three of the starting five. That's pretty storybook.

Yeah, it is. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I like that. That makes them the best team in the East. The best team in the West was the San Antonio team. Boo. The worst team in the East is...

The Washington Wizards. The Washington Wizards. Oh, was the Wizards? In the East. In the East. And the worst team in the West? Was the Sacramento King? No, really?

I don't know if that was actually true, but they were pretty bad this year. I don't think they could have been that bad. We picked it. No, they were. When I was there in December, they shot the laser, which they only do when they win. The beam. They call it the beat. They were tied for the worst.

No way. With the Utah Jazz. Yeah. They were bad. Wasn't Michael Jordan on the jazz? No, he famously stole their soul year after year. He was on the Wizards. But yeah, the Wizards.

Turned to the Blues. Okay. Also, I will say that there's probably a tech equivalent to this. The Pacers. Okay. The Pacers were the best team in the East last season. They lost one player

and were now the second worst team in the entire East this year. That sounds like the devil's the last couple years. And then we didn't lose. Our player got his hand cut at dinner. And then we just fell apart. How did he cut his? He leaned on a piece of glass. Did he mistake his steak for a hand or his hand for a steak?

No idea. It was a steakhouse, but it absolutely destroyed our team. Damn, Golden State did pretty bad this year. Is it a tech equivalent to being one of the biggest, most successful companies, losing a single person and then being one of the worst? Steve Jobs when he left Apple and then they basically tanked and then they brought him back. All right. Tarys Halliburton, you heard of here first.

And then Halliburton will come back and hopefully they'll be better, I guess. The Knicks need a little bit of competition next year, so I would love if the Pacers could come back better because the rest of the East doesn't care. They're essentially the same exact team, I understand. What do you want them to have a competition? Because it's more fun. Honestly, it felt too easy this year.

Actually, perfect place to end this. Perfect place to end this. Okay. Nick's missing the playoffs next year. We've been using this entire podcast to try to explain sports, specifically NBA basketball, in tech terms. Yeah.

And I think the number one overlap, the most obvious similarity between the two, is fan boyisms. in sports you pick a team and you ride or die with this team rationality be damned

right they might be the best team you get to cheer for them they might be one of the best teams you call them the best team they might be kind of mid you call them the best team but as soon as they start to get a little bit bad

you ruthlessly rag on them until you get them back good again but you're mean to your own guys we got to get them better and unacceptable they have to be the best they have to be the best Nick's famous

during bad years will boo their own team. To tell them that they suck. To tell them that they suck. But it's the same thing in tech where, I mean, the fanboyisms of like iPhone versus Android of like all these different companies, Macs versus PCs, like this is a tale as old as time. I feel like it's even similar in the sense of like in tech,

let's say, like the our Android's subreddit is the same. Yeah. Because it's so many different companies. fanboys in one place where if you went to the Google subreddit, they would be like, I can't believe Google's screwing us again. I can't believe it's only a hundred. But then in the Android suburb, if someone says something bad about Google, that same person who's like, how dare you?

We are the best. You're terrible. I don't care. What's your problem? You're an idiot. And that is a one-to-one perfect replica of what happens in sports. Where it's like, I'm a lot to say that. You're not allowed to say that.

I'm allowed to say that about my team. You can't say that about my team. And your team is even worse. And you're not allowed to like your team. You're an idiot for like you. Oh, that's what Nick's fans were told for years. Yeah. So I would like to give you guys an opportunity to pick an NBA team now to ride or die with

and to defend them and to live with them the exact same way that you would. So death do you part. For a tech team. Wait until you, because I feel like you should just root for wherever you live. So that's the easy version of this. We're also conveniently located in a. a desert where they used to be an NBA team, RIP New Jersey Nets. You can pick the New York team.

You will, just warning you. I'm just warning you, you will get accused of bandwagoning. That's okay. But I live there. That's okay. David's valid. Hey, if you watch for 15 days before they won't chance. I've given David the pass.

Many people do. And the people who are already fans will give you a pass, but the people who are not fans will call you a bandwagoner. Well, that's fine. I will warn you. There were some very dark years as a Knicks fan. So we're in a high era now. We're past that.

We'll never go back there again. As long as you like sort of acknowledge them. He can just think a new team later, right? Yeah, he can just move and get a new team later on. David's from Brooklyn, so you should be with the next. No. The Nets? That's true.

That's true. You live in Brooklyn. You live in Brooklyn. So if you want to. No, it doesn't matter. You don't. Closer to Queens, to be honest. Dude, the Nets aren't a real team.

You don't need to root for them. I have similar. So this is the thing. I grew up in New Jersey. And when I first started watching NBA basketball, basketball, coincidentally, the New Jersey Nets were an incredible team. I remember I went to this basketball camp randomly as a kid and got to meet some of the players.

I remember bald Richard Jefferson, prime Richard Jefferson, comes over and like rustles my hair and it's like, what's up kid? And I'm like, oh my God, Richard Jefferson. Like that moment I will have forever, Kenyon Martin, Kerry Kittles, Jason Kidd. Like this team. You got to meet all that? This was a team that went to the finals. Twice.

I remember that. I was a fifth grade. They have not been the same since. They have thus moved to Brooklyn and have been one of the stinkers who's been tanking and just horrible to watch. Yeah. That's what happens for a lot of people that moved to Brooklyn. Come a real stinker. I come from, you know, that's the team I used to root for, but I'm not a diehard.

They left me. I don't have a team anymore. So I kind of just root for players. You know, it's hilarious about that whole situation. Maybe there's a technology here. Jay Z was a 5% stockholder or whatever in the Nets. They do this whole thing to move to Brooklyn for Jay Z because they're like, yo, we're moving with Hope, we're moving to Brooklyn, whatever.

Jay Z like one year after they move starts a sports agency and has to immediately divest from the company and leaves them high and dry and now is back to like cheering for the Knicks again. So, okay, here's the thing. I feel like you should for life have to cheer for like the closest team to where you were born. Okay. The problem with that for me specifically is that the kings have not won since 1951. Yeah, they're bad. And they were called a different name. They were the royals back then. Yeah. This is your opportunity to get on your Knicks.

Like, this is the feeling that Nix fans have had for 50 years. All my life. Which is they've been bad for your entire conscious lifetime and they're finally good. David, plan your flag right now. You can plant your king's flag now. No, no, no, not your king's flag. If you, no, if you, I mean, you can. I do have the Mike Baby, bobblehead. By low. So if they do win, then I have like some O-DBin.

That's true. I think that's a more credible, deeply rooted. Like, you could celebrate with tears if the Kings win. I'll give you this also. People are less mad if you have two teams you really like when they're in different conference. Yeah. So if you have a, if you're like the Knicks are my Eastern Conference team and the Kings

are my Western Conference. That's all right. It's legal. I've kind of always had like a Western Conference team that I like. Who's your team? The Spurs. Oh, Well, I mean, it's buried.

No, absolutely not. It's actually varied for me, but for a long time, I liked the Sonics when Ray Allen was there. Where's that? Seattle. They're no longer there anymore, and hopefully we'll be coming back in the next couple years. But then I liked when Tracy McGrady was on the Houston Rockets with Yao Ming. So you're doing what I do, which is like, I follow a player for a while that I really like. And when they're a West Coast team, it's tough because I can't watch many games because they start their games.

See, I like that because I'm a Night Owl. So I like having a West Coast team that I mess with. like 1 a.m. I've been a Chris Paul fan for basically his entire prime, and he's bounced around a bunch of West Coast teams, and all of those teams have had heartbreaking disastrous losses, by the way, so it's been tough. But I'm trying to watch more East Coast because... I also don't really have a Western Conference team right now, because that was always a coping mechanism for me when the Knicks were terrible. It was like, oh, what other team can I like just while the Knicks are terrible? Andrew, what is your... Well, so I was going to kind of bring that up.

So I feel like I have to be a Knicks fan, one, because Alex then reached for the Devils with me when he watches hockey. And he's not. So I have so many friends that are Knicks fans. Friendship. Watching them throughout this was very funny. I mean, in game four when they were down,

my friend was like, that's it. We lost the series. We're losing two four and I was like, that's the Knicks fans I know. They were already up to zero. I was like, they're going to win because that's the dejected nature that I'm used to.

Yeah. But then I was going to say in basketball, working with Marquezra's song, I've never seen a sport where people follow players as much rather than teams. So Darius Garland, who does he play for? He now plays for the Clippers. I'm a Clippers fan.

That's my West Coast team. Darius Garland all the way. The reason for that, by the way, well, maybe we can relate to this. NBA players are more marketable. They're marketable because you see their face all the time. 100%. And then also an NBA player,

a single NBA player can influence the entire fate of a team more than a single player in any other sport. It's like if you were a quarterback that didn't have to wear a helmet and you could see their face on the team. But even a quarterback like with a bad offensive line, still a bad team. Yeah, but it's still like they're still the guy. Yeah, yeah. Like it's hard to be the guy in a lot of things unless you're Connor McDade.

I have a question I should have asked earlier, but is related to the players. What exactly does it mean to be a free agent? Yeah. So basically the way that basketball works is you sign con. Actually, this relates. We didn't really talk about this. employees in tech, right? A lot of tech companies have contract employees.

Yeah. All of basketball are contracting employees. They have no competes. Yeah. They have non-competees. Until they become a free agent, at which point they can sign with whatever team they want. So they have to stay with one team. For the length of their contract.

So if tech could trade, that would be really funny. Yeah. So I kind of do. They kind of do, but in a different way. Actually, tech is kind of like Premier League soccer because they allow buyouts. Premier League soccer, I'm learning about this. I'm learning a new sport. You can pay a transfer fee. So if you see a player on another team that you really like, you can be like, hey, I want Erling Holland or whatever, who's a player on Manchester City.

And but he's really good. So the team doesn't want to give him up. So they say, fine. If you want to even negotiate with him, you have to pay us $200 million. And then the team might be like, okay, here's 200 million. And we're going to also negotiate a contract with him to pay him hundreds of millions of dollars too. Holy crap. But that's kind of like tech where you can have, you know, people get buyouts and whatever. Is there a certain number of years that have to go by before you become a free agent? It varies by contract. Just based on your contract.

So typically three, four, or five year contracts, a big long contract. Yeah. When you get two to that contract. Like Nixon. Okay. Okay. So when you first start out of college, you are automatically in a contract and then after that you're a free agent.

Yeah. You start as a free agent when you're right at a call? No. You get drafted. And then you sign maybe a rookie contract for that one year with that team. Okay. Then you maybe have your free agent again. You might sign another one or two-year contract.

As you get to your prime and your more desirable, teams want to lock you down for longer, that you might sign a three, four, five-year contract where you're there for a long time. But once that contract ends again, you're technically a free agent again. But then teams can also arbitrarily decide to trade you. Got it.

And be like, oh, actually, you're not as good as we thought. So we're going to trade you to another team. you have to go live where they want you to live. Yeah, yeah. Players don't like it. I don't like that either. Yeah, yeah. But, I mean, they're making millions of dollars to do it.

So they deal with it. Okay. Well, I feel like I know a ball now. Yeah. I think this is a great place to wrap it up. Ideally now, when we do our smartphone awards at the end of the year, we can have like sports equivalent. Like, you guys will know.

Like, when I give an MVP award to a phone, you'll now have that much more lore and context. Should be the Jalen Brunson Awards? This is. Can we call it the Jalen Brunson Memorial smartphone of the year this year? Memorializing his season. You'll now, yeah, you'll now be able to draw the equivalent. You'd be like, I can see how that phone is Jalen Brunson.

The Javitp, the Jalen Brensen. Jalen Brunson, valuable player. There's a million more strings that we didn't tie in this episode. I'm sure the comment section will help us out with that. There's many more crossover things between tech and sports, but... What do you think the percentages of usual waveform listeners that at this point in the episode? I think we'll find out because zero spurs fans.

I know that. If you made it this far, comment. Nix in six. Nix and five. That's how we'll note. All right. Everyone is saying next to say. And then everyone who comes in and is to be like, oh, wait for I'm talking about basketball.

Look at the comments. To be like, they obviously didn't do a very good job. Wait, what if you do Nixon four? That's like another cut because they did four in every other. Oh, Nixon four. So we say Nixon four. All right. All right.

That's your comment. That's how we'll know you made it. the end of the episode. Nixon 4. And now we'll know if you made it to that part of the episode, but not in this one of the episode. There's going to be so many. Nixon 6. Wait, no, Nixon 5.

Wait, ah, Nixon 4. Wow. So that's been it. Thank you for watching. It's a hundred degrees in this room right now. It's so hot. Just know that when the Sacramento Kings win, I'm going to be there. I'm going to be there with my Mike Baby Bubblehead, okay?

I'll be there with you. I'll read for them with you. On your bubble bar. On my bubble bar. You will have really earned that one. Sick. All right. Catch you guys.

one. Peace. Wayform is produced by Adam Alina and Rufus Mulhopped. We are partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our introacture music was created by Vainzill. Bingo! Let's go! Nixon 5.