WHOOP Podcast - David Stern, NBA Commissioner Emeritus, talks sports, technology, data, gambling, social media, & much more.

Episode Date: December 4, 2018

WHOOP Founder & CEO Will Ahmed talks to David Stern about his career as NBA Commissioner (7:22), the challenges he faced and how he overcame them (11:47), sports and its overlap with politics (24:22), social media (19:49), gambling (29:50), cannabis (45:17), what data and technology will do to extend players' careers (30:42), and how he suspended a player for kneeling during the national anthem 20 years before Colin Kaepernick (15:27).Support the showFollow WHOOP: www.whoop.com Trial WHOOP for Free Instagram TikTok YouTube X Facebook LinkedIn Follow Will Ahmed: Instagram X LinkedIn Follow Kristen Holmes: Instagram LinkedIn Follow Emily Capodilupo: LinkedIn

We discovered that there were secrets that your body was trying to tell you that could really help you optimize performance. But no one could monitor those things. And that's when we set out to build the technology that we thought could really change the world. Welcome to the WOOP podcast. I'm your host, Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of Woop, where we are on a mission to unlock human performance. At WOOP, we measure the body 24-7 and provide analytics to our members to help improve performance. This includes strain, recovery, and sleep. Our clients range for the best professional athletes in the world, to Navy SEALs, to fitness enthusiasts, to Fortune 500 CEOs and executives.

The common thread among WOOP members is a passion to improve. What does it take to optimize performance for athletes, for humans, really anyone? We're launching a podcast to dig deeper. We'll interview experts and industry leaders across sports, data, technology, physiology, athletic achievement, you name it. When I founded Whoop, I didn't know exactly where it would take me, and hosting a podcast was certainly not one of the first things on my mind. In the process, though, I've gotten to interact with amazing athletes, advisors, investors,

and had some really fascinating conversations. And that was a lot of the inspiration for starting this podcast. podcast. I think there's something about this format, this type of conversation that really allows you to delve deeper. My hope is that you'll leave these conversations with some new ideas and a greater passion for performance. With that in mind, I welcome you to the Whoop podcast. That will obviously extend careers if properly done by a a year or two, at least. Imagine if every NBA star had an extra year tacked on.

I know we bonded up for this idea. It's incredible. My guest today is David Stern. David served as commissioner of the National Basketball Association for 30 years, during which time the NBA became one of the most successful leagues in the world. I've been fortunate to get to know David through our work together on Woop, where he's an advisor and an investor. In this conversation, we talk about his career as commissioner, some of the challenges he faced and how he overcame them. We talk about sports today, topics like sports overlap with politics good, social media amongst players.

We even talk about gambling, cannabis, and how he suspended a player for kneeling 20 years before Colin Kaepernick. It's a wide-ranging conversation and certainly left me thinking more about the future of technology and sports, and I hope you enjoy it. Without further ado, here's David. David, thank you for doing this. My pleasure. So we're sitting here in your beautiful office of Manhattan. I'm looking around your office and seeing some unbelievable photos of you shaping the history of the NBA. And I definitely want to talk about where sports are today, as well as, you know, all the things that we've done.

talked about with the future of sports and data. But I thought I would start just by asking you about your career in the NBA. In 1984, you're named commissioner. And that also happens to be what's considered arguably the greatest draft ever, where you have Jordan and Hakeem, Barkley, Stockton, right? They all want that draft. Were you enough of a fan of the sport at that time to have any comprehension of how good they were? Or were you just really focused on the Even though I've always been a fan, I don't, and issues like that, I'm always more worried about the fact that we were busy moving the drafts from a conference call to a hotel room, to a ballroom, to the business of it.

The business or the details, the execution of details. Totally. And it's sort of, you know, when I go to a game or went to a game, you know, everyone is there rooting for somebody. I'm rooting for there to be no injury, no fight, no bad referees call, that incorrect call that decides the outcome of the game, and hoping that there are enough fans in the seats and that the signage, which was then rotational, doesn't get stuck. So you want it just to be a great product? Yes, it was so mundane. You know, we also made several rules changes

which were designed to improve the game and make it more appealing to fans. But you don't get a chance to enjoy it enough. What do you think was the most important rule change that you made during your time? I think there was a series of changes that I really, I couldn't even give you the specifics on where I finally said to, I guess it was Stu Jackson,

we cannot allow ourselves to be trapped by the fact that the coaches coach a certain way and it can't be an answer that as long as the coaches coach that way we can't do anything and that was isolation so Houston had Steve Francis and Rudy T. would send him into a corner to bounce the ball and send all of the other offensive players out into the parking line and our crazy defensive guidelines required our

our defensive team to go chase them into the parking lot. And so no one wanted to watch DeFrancis just dribbling and then he would do one-on-one better than anyone in the world and then he would score. So we redefined the guidelines on illegal defenses, allowed, you know, probably almost the zone, but you couldn't stand in the paint from within 2.9 seconds. So when you're working through a rule change like that,

like this is always fascinated me in sports. Right. You have so many different constituencies that you have to worry about, right? Especially in your role as commission. You've got players, you've got the teams, you've got the owners, you've got the fans, sponsors. You left out the most important one. Okay. The coaches. Coaches, right. Because the teams put the coaches on the committees, and lo and behold, the coaches' views very often dovetailed with their particular roster at the time. Right, which is short-sighted, but makes sense. Well, but understandable. Right, yeah. Okay, that's just the way it is. And so if you have an eight and a half foot player, you probably don't mind him

having the greatest opportunity to sit in the paint and swat everything away. You know, so you have to listen to them all and then decide what is best for the league and the game and assume that the people you're asking to vote for the changes, no. that you don't have a horse in that race, just the well-being of the league is your major concern. At what point did you know that Michael Jordan was going to be so special, not just for basketball, but I think for the whole evolution of sports and marketing?

Was there a particular moment in your mind where you're like, wow, this guy's a little different than everyone? I'm not even going to tell you a basketball story. No, in 1988, I can't even remember the, okay, late 80s, early 90s, We opened the season in Japan with two teams, Utah and Phoenix. Okay. And I decided that we would go to China for the weekend before then because that was a different part of the world we might as well see.

So we got off the plane, my wife and I, and we never stopped moving. We went to Xi'an to see the Terakoti soldiers, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And while we're in Sheehan, our guide, who was then an employee of NBC, is talking to our guide in Sheehan, and she said, you know, she knows you're involved with basketball, and she just wants you to know that she's a fan of the red oxen. But she doesn't know how to say bulls. Right, right. I said to my wife, there's something going on here. Right. Okay.

There really is something going on here. And a couple of years later, when we went to South Africa, a group stopped in Zambia at a, I think it was Zambia, at a, at a refugee camp. And the residents swept up the dirt floor and came out in their best gear. And it was Chicago Bulls uniforms. Right. So I began to understand, really through the Bulls, that this was a global phenomenon. Global phenomenon. That something was happening. It happened a little earlier. In 88, we went with the Hawks to the Soviet Union. It was still the Soviet Union there.

And we go out to Countess, which is the second city, but it's the city where Arvita, Sabonis, and Sharonus, Marshalonis were born. and played, et cetera, and you get ushered into the mayor's office, and there's the mayor, the head of the countess Communist Party, the head of the Communist Party, the head of the Communist Basketball Federation, the head of the National Basketball Federation, the head of this and that and everything else. And we have very pleasant conversation exchange gifts, and then they start peppering me with questions, which basically came down to, isn't it unfair and almost un-American, that Portland has Subonis on their draft list, but they don't have enough.

room under the cap to sign him. I'm saying these guys know about the cap. They know about our system. I mean, and that was a great sign, but it was really fascinating to me because there was no, there was no TV that was current. There was no anything that was current.

David, you built a reputation of being a really good negotiator over the course of 30 years running the NBA. Who do you think were the hardest constituencies to negotiate with? The owners, always. They were always, I'll never forget, we were at some point negotiating with CBS over a TV deal. And the owner said, okay, guys, this is CBS's offer. It's $173 million for four years,

as opposed to $88 million for the last four years. What was the time frame? Could have been early 80s. Okay. And they said to me, as we're sitting, around David that's not adequate go back and get more I said okay fine and then as Russ Granik the deputy commissioner and I I don't know who was deputy then or not he said but don't lose the deal right okay so off we went yeah you know they're impossible okay so we

went there with we had to get more than 173 but we were going to lose we couldn't lose the deal that's a very difficult situation to put someone here one guy i remember being difficult for you but i think you ultimately did him a big favor in the eyes of the other owners um was mark cuban who when he first came into the scene was very disruptive he was one of the first guys to get jets for his teams and it was very critical of officiating and you would just find find him it seemed like I was making his career. Yeah. And we were friends.

A little told story, excuse me, which the owners sort of enjoyed poking me with, was that Mark, before he owned the team, he just went to the contract, was out there talking a lot. Right.

And then we came to a committee meeting to finally approve and the vote of the like the finance committee, advisory finance committee and the another committee. I'm making this up. It was like seven to six in favor of the application.

So I said to them, you know, guys, I don't know how to say this gently, but if you go in at seven, six, he's not getting approved, no shot. And, you know, he may be difficult, but that's why you pay me the big bucks. Okay, so I think you would be wise to approve it. Every time I find him, I would get an email or a poke from an owner's, hey, he's, he's shot. shown your vulnerabilities, you're not, you know, your impotence, you know, et cetera. But I, it was fine. I mean, I just did what I had to do and built up his reputation. I was almost as foil.

And, but at the same time, as I was finding him, I'd be calling him to say, what do you think about this broadcasting issue or that technology issue? So we got along fine. What about 2004, the Pacers Pistons brawl? I remember seeing that on television as a fan and thinking, oh, man, this is going to be tough to difficult to deal with. Like, I can't imagine what that was like for you in managing it. You know, it's kind of interesting. I came to accept the notion that you've got to walk right through it and deal with it directly.

Just take it head on. So, and frankly, on the downhill slide of life, I think I have to. to be less of a wise guy, too, because we did what we did. We spent all weekend looking at tape and everything else. We were on the phone, conference calls. Everyone had a perspective.

And then I we set up a press conference and it was for Sunday. This happened, I'd say, on a Friday night and we set up a press conference for Sunday at 6 o'clock before the Nick game.

So we'd go to the garden and it gets coverage. It's like CNN. Totally. And in addition to ESPN. And we make the announcement. And we're big suspensions. I think Ron for the rest of the season, Stephen Jackson for so many, this player, for 35 games, and this player for so many.

And then afterwards, you know, I was asked, well, how did you get to this decision? I said, well, we had a committee. We worked on it. And then I was asked, well, what was the vote? I said it was unanimous, won nothing. Of course, that was the wise guy of me. Because, of course, it wasn't just me. It was, we reached a consensus, and I was there to lay it out,

but I wasn't handing up anyone else. Well, I think one thing that I've admired about your career, and I think has been a compliment to the way that you ran things at the NBA, is that you weren't hesitant about taking decisive action when you felt like something needed to be done. And what's interesting is I was looking back over it, and you dealt with a very similar situation to today's NFL kneeling issue, where there was a guy named Chris Jackson in 1996 who changed his name to Abdul al-Roof. Mahmood Abdul Raouf. Right.

And he changes his name. He converts to Islam. And he no longer thinks of the flag as a side. sign of freedom, but a sign of oppression. And he literally, you know, kneeled for the flag. And the next day, you find him and you suspended him for a game. And it was done. And to this day, in the NBA rule book, there's a rule that you need to stand for the flag. Yeah. We did that. So I'm not sure, I've said this before, that under the current environment, I might have, well, I would be so flip in just enforcing the rules because there's a you know there were serious issues but i right um

but at the time in dealing with everything that we had in front of us there was this rule that we had put in and we were authorized to do reasonable rules it wasn't that we had specifically collectively bargained over that but we had a rule that said players should stand for the national anthem right and we tried to negotiate with muck wood we said that we said don't come out onto the court. You don't have to. You won't be fined. Stay in the locker room.

It's okay too. He said, no, I'm coming out, but I'm not going to stand. So we said, oh, well, if you do that, we're going to have to find you. So you worked closely with him. Oh, we tried. He made a decision. And then if he lost a day's pay, he decided it would be worth, it wasn't worth it. He made his point.

How do you feel the NFL's, handled this kneeling issue. It's a different time. I actually believed that they were badly sandbagged by public opinion and... The NFL in general.

Yeah. I don't know what the right thing was, but it's almost like the Twitterverse lit up. Yeah, totally. Okay, and Instagram, Facebook, whatever the social media

du jour was pounding them. And it was kind of interesting to me because the NFL has sort of pretty strict rules about what you can do and can't do on the field. Right. Although they do have ambiguity around standing for the flag. If you compare the rulebook in the NFL's standing up to the day.

So they were caught in a certain place where they had a policy but not a rule. But what ended it as a practical matter is a reporter put the mic in front of them. President Obama on a visit to China and said, what do you think? And he said, of course, he has a First Amendment right to do that. I am a card-carrying Democrat, and I am an admirer of President Obama. But as a lawyer, I'd say he's a great constitutional lawyer.

He's not a good labor lawyer. Because the only right that you have is that which your union negotiates for. right that's it okay unless you're up against some other issues like you know whether somebody can wear a skull cap or go a beard or something that goes to their religious views but he didn't have a constitutional right to do anything I I you routinely find coaches and players yeah for saying things about the game you're allowed to say these things there's just maybe repercussion that's it okay and so then you take your fine and move up on. Right. And it's an interesting point that I made to the players, not about this particular

issue, because I'm not sure that given, you know, if someone did it tomorrow, I'm not sure what would happen. I don't envy Commissioner Silver sitting on that particular issue. But we then had to persuade the players, and it didn't take too much to say to them that when you're on social media, you have to treat it as though you were standing outside the locker. on a television camera. Totally. And it took a couple of incidents for them to understand that. Well, one thing that I've found, I think, useful for sports with social media is you can

gauge a reaction to something really quickly, right? Like, the whole kneeling thing, part of the reason I was surprised that there was a slow response from the NFL on it was there was like this light up from the Twitterverse. And it's like there's an opportunity. Yeah, that's something that as an operating model, I say these things not because we were so well organized, but after the fact looking back at the way we operated, is I came to the belief that you've got to act fast. Act fast, totally. Right, because it used to drive me nuts when a player in baseball would have a pitcher would have, you know, grease on the ball.

and he gets suspended. Then he appeals. So now the question is, did you have grease on the ball or pine tar on the bat? And it gets another start, two starts, and then he loses the appeal. So the thing stretches out.

In our case, because basically historically, I don't think the owners cared at the time, we had a set of rules that entrusted the commissioner with the ability to administer justice. Right. And then move on.

And that was a big, that's a big deal. And you're right about the Twitterverse because, you know, during an NBA finals, 75% of the Twitter traffic is about the finals. Which is awesome. So we have a very engaged fan base. And now with Snap and Instagram, I think it's even more engaged. So you think that, and we're now more or less talking about sports to. today. Do you think that social media for the athletes, do you think that can be a distraction? You know, you see situations where a player like Antonio Brown, I remember in the NFL last year,

was recording a press, you know, a private team meeting, you know, streaming it out to, you know, Instagram and whatnot. You know, I think that... You see catty things between players. Yeah. It can be double-edged if the players aren't mature enough to realize that it's there as a vehicle to improve their, how well known they may be,

what their views are, etc. I think that's a low, that's a low risk to me. The benefit of having players on social media is huge. I think the benefit from a publicity

and marketing standpoint is amazing. The one piece I think about is like you have individuals now who are building personal brands at times that can rival that of the team? And does that ever create a friction just within the whole concept of being a team? The pendulum as we sit here is swinging. Yeah. You know, the unions, for the most part, have now unanimously taken back the group negotiated for and gotten the group licensing rights for their

membership. And in large measure, because of things that we put into effect practices with our players, literally training them on social media and registering them on social media is leading to a situation where a player like LeBron James has a multiple of people who follow him on Twitter that the president of the United States has. Right.

You know, but that's, and now all of a sudden you see in the midpoint there, the player's tribune, which is so active and individual players and their agents and their business associates, there's a lot of activity in the player-driven, both in venture and in social media. And the two are probably in some way related because when a player gets to be that successful,

he decides to try to capitalize on that success. And that's just the way it is. I don't have a problem with it. Would you have expected for the lines between sports in politics to have blurred so much with, I mean, that's one of the probably results of the growth to personal brands

and things like Player Tribune and, you know, having these platforms. Yeah, I expected it. You did? Yes, because sports has this enormous power and it cannot hide from its relevance. It's creating

very well-known characters. And, you know, I saw it firsthand with Magic Johnson when he announced that he was HIV positive. That was an amazing time. In 1991, Magic Johnson, with little help from his friends at the NBA, changed the debate on HIV and AIDS in this country. 100%. Okay. And so I'm saying watching that.

And then in 93, I had the good fortune of visiting with Nelson Mandela in South Africa with a group of players. And what he said to us then was that sports can be used to keep people together and bring them together. And he lived it in the movie known as Invictus when he supported the essentially mostly white rugby team to bring his country together over the objections of some who thought he shouldn't do that. But it was a wonderful act as it was recorded. And so everywhere we went, we saw the relevance of sports in life. And that sort of helped inform us. You can do it for social responsibility, which we did through NBA cares. But it can also involve, you know, you're building stars,

and you want to get behind getting people to vote, and we do that. But then you're out there in the field. And you're subject to taking some incoming ordinance, so to speak. I was listening to one commentator, this guy named Clay Travis, and he was talking about how in the 80s and 90s, he couldn't actually remember his favorite athletes' political affiliation. But if you look at it today, you know, it's very clear what some of the stars feel politically. And anyway, he goes on to write this book, which is a Michael Jordan quote of all things.

even Republicans buy sneakers. Republicans buy sneakers, too, excuse me. So I guess the question is, do you feel that if sports as a whole is skewing towards one party or the other, that could be bad for business? Well, it might be, but that's life. That's what you have to face up to if you have that situation. But I don't know.

I think it would be sterile to not be counted. in some shape or form on the debate. Now, that may be my own politics, but I don't know. I think that we live in an age where the failure to speak up is going to wind up having, you know, I mean, here we have the ravage of Florida by Hurricane Michael. And destruction, they can't even find all of the bodies that were people who were killed.

And it appears, at least to me, that we're paying the price for neglecting the issue of climate change. I guess, you know, I guess you could say, oh, no one should have an opinion on that because it divides people. But how can it be that the president visits the site and says, well, yes, something's going on, but maybe it will go back? I mean, it's like, okay, it shouldn't be a political issue. It should be, my view is there are certain things that separate us and others that bring us together. Right. And as a country, we used to be brought together by the notion that people shouldn't go uneducated, they shouldn't go hungry, they shouldn't go homeless,

and they shouldn't be subjected to the ravages of climate change or hurricanes or hurricanes or tsunamis or whatever without the government stepping up to lend a hand in an efficient fashion. Now, you know, maybe there are those on the other side that think that those are political issues, that hunger and homelessness and ignorance and lack of education should be, is politicizing something. I just never, I never believe that. And I think to your point, like, it just shows the power that sports can have in driving these things home. We change the name of the person responsible on these subjects from the head of the community relations to the head of social responsibility. And I'm proud that the NBA now has a president of social responsibility.

That's great. That's Kathy Barron's is her name. And they do great things. Let's talk quickly about legalization of gambling. Do you think that that is something, because the NBA actually has come out and partnered with MGM Resorts, so they seem to be taking a lead in this. If you look at this internationally with Premier League Soccer and things like that, you know, you go to the game and you can place a whatever wager on the team that's about to play.

Do you see that as a future for United States football? You know, I do it in several steps. I testified in favor of PASPA, which is the professional amateur and professional and amateur sports protection act, which was declared unconstitutional as a statute by the Supreme Court this summer after 27 years of being the law of the land. And that act prohibited sports betting in any jurisdiction that didn't have it in or about 1991-92. But, you know, the NBA changed its position with my agreement because daily fantasy has been good for sports. Well, whether it's good or bad, I don't know, it's legal.

No one said no to it. And so I said, well, once you legalize Daily Fantasy, that's just betting by another name, so how can you maintain? Although, wouldn't you argue it's good for the NBA to have, I mean, who's watching a game 100 to 80? Yes, separate subject. That's correct. I do believe that now that sports betting is legal

and proposition bets are going to take their place in the sun, it will enhance the ratings of NBA games. it will enhance the number of sponsors, i.e. casinos and other people associated with the betting industry to advertise on games. And it will enhance the casinos themselves because people will bet. It has certain potential risks, but it can be, I think, protected against. And so I agree, it's probably going to be good for sports. Now, whether or not it's in the arena itself, is sort of a non-issue for me because it's going to be,

if you have your cell phone in your arena, you're going to be able to bed in the arena. Right. So, end of case. Now, you and I got to know each other through talking about data and what sports can be in the future. You've been a mentor to me in running whoop, and obviously we're focused on things like recovery and exercise and sleep,

how you can monitor the other 20 hours of the day. Don't forget strain. And the stress, of course. And so my question for you is, as you think about sports over the next, let's say, 10 years, right, how much longer do you think NBA players' careers or athletes in general can be? Do you think that we're going to see players that are doing the Ray Allen, the LeBron James, the Tom Brady-type career, do you think that's going to be more common? Yes, in the short answer is I think that. there are so many measurement approaches, devices, protocols, however you describe them, and players are going to interface with those so much earlier in their careers,

that the playing career length is going to be a function of the life career, life length. You know, we're going to have more people who are going to be octogenarians, which I think means 100. or, you know, and maybe... We'll double check that. Nanogenarians. And nanogenarians, check that out too. And when they go to a birthday celebration, you know, there'll be multiple relatives who are the same age.

And so that's going to reflect itself in sports as well because they're going to be monitored in a certain way. Their blood pressure, their heartbeat, their hydration, their sleep, their recovery, their strain. they're going to all get monitored in a very special way. And that will obviously extend careers, if properly done, by a year or two, at least. And think about that. Every star. Yeah. How good is that for the end?

You know, if you're a rookie, you don't like that as much. But if you're a star, imagine if every NBA star had an extra year tacked on. It would be great for business. I know. We bonded up for this idea. It's incredible. And so I think it's coming together with, I think what you focused on is one area that is, which is sleep, which is going to be very important. The fact of the matter is you can't, most people, and most players can't make it on four hours sleep.

No. Okay. Especially if you're competing at the level. Right. And when I describe whoop, I say, well, what it tells you is that if LeBron ran a marathon, you could check his whoop, and it would tell you that he could run it another one tomorrow. Right. If I ran a marathon, they'd say, see us in 20 years.

And that's kind of interesting. And so people are going to be motivated to do just that, which is check the numbers and how you're doing. I think the more interesting thing, I mean, I think that's bedrock. That's just, doesn't take, you don't have to be a genius, understand that if you monitor yourself, you're going to be focusing on diet, exercise, behavior, and a like in a very positive way. What you're also going to be focused on, this is the place that's going to be difficult to work out,

is in-game monitoring, which is my apocryful story of the assistant coach, sitting in the locker room in front of the board or several monitors and telling the assistant coach behind the bench, okay, you know, Will Ahmed is his lactic acid. Lactic acid is congealed. His heart bait is up too high. His hydration sucks. His stress is too high.

His stress is too high. And not only that, his facial recognition tells you that he'd like to be every place but where he is. And that's a second part of the measurement. And the first part of the measurement is going to be a combination of your scoring, you know, points for and points against, your speed, you know, etc. And that's going to be used for judging player talent

and judging, you know, you want this person on your roster, and then how he plays, and then how he takes care of himself. So there are, so sort of analytic, biometric, and some other category that... I think everything you just described, in my opinion, is inevitable, like from a data, from the ability for data to be able to measure what you just described. I think what's going to be really interesting is where the leagues and the players association settle on how much of that data needs to be kept private versus how much of it becomes part of fan engagement.

I, you know, I think that the players have a strong case on privacy. Of course. And I would agree with most of it. But in the game itself, it's, it's, the cat's out of the bag, so to speak, how fast you're running, your shooting accuracy and things like that are going to be in the public domain almost. You can't escape it. players will find is that information, like how they were shooting and free throw

percentage and all these things, they'll actually find is more intimate than all this biometric information. Yes. Because once everyone's sharing that information, it becomes sort of the baseline for understanding performance. Right. You know, at the end of the day, performance is still what matters. You know, no one was, the jazz weren't bragging about the fact that Michael Jordan had

the flu after they lost the game, right? He won the flu game. Right. Because he played well. I was there, I know. By the way, that was an incredible sporting event. I think to this day, maybe my favorite sporting event ever. Well, you know, all I can say is that I wish I could enjoy, I can now, by this commissioner, I couldn't enjoy it that way.

As I said, I'm more concerned about other things. What are a couple of the other companies that you're involved in, like Whoop, that you're excited about from a data standpoint? Well, the main one on data, in addition to WOOP, is a shot tracker. Very interesting what they're doing, yeah. Yeah, they literally are, it has multiple uses because you literally have a sensor in the ball and another one on the place shoe and a bunch in the ceiling. And literally, you can track the game. You can follow the game on, you know, every player, on a big screen and see passes,

rebounds, et cetera, because they also have the XYZ axis. Right. If they ever decide, they can do strain and speed and other things. But I think they're big, you know, maybe it's my limitation rather than theirs. The big deal is that it's in virtual real time. And that's going to become an issue because if there's betting on a game, the bookmakers are not going to appreciate it if a better knows the outcome

of a particular shot before he places his bet. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. That's like the definition of real time. Yes, it's going to be... A shot goes off. Shot checker knows whether it's in before the...

Is TV live enough for that actually to happen? There's like a few seconds delay, isn't there? That's right, but if you're at the game, there's no delay. Smart. Yep, you're right. And so the issue becomes, the word used as latency. And so you can, if you have too much latency, and there's a specific delays built into the TV

because of language potential and other, you know, or equipment malfunction, as we now call Justin Timberlake's Super Bowl. Oh, right. And so it's just going to be an interesting subject that there's going to be a workaround in some shape or form. Shot tracker with a sensor in the ball is going to be able to be at the forefront of giving you real-time stats, which another problem is going to be, once you have that, there are going to

be algorithms that are going to tell you as a fan in the stands with your iPhone or your other device, your Android device, that the coach is using the wrong combinations based upon how you did in the first half. Well, that's true. I think there will be more scrutiny for coaching with all this information. Right. And there's going to be a coach's backlash of types that are going, coaches are going to say, don't tell me that I can be replaced by a bunch of machines. Because I don't think they can be, but the coaches are going to have to find out how to work in harmony with the aforementioned machines.

Do you think the habit of sitting players for just a random game throughout the season? So this happened in 2012 where Popovich sat Duncan and Parker and a few other players. And I remember you find them because they didn't have a reason for the players not playing. Do you think that that's something that's going to continue as a trend? Well, actually, perhaps not because of whoop and others' devices like it, because you're going to know whether the player needs the rest or not. now that's an interesting issue about whether that's private or the team has it or the league has it well that's where i was going with this so it's you know if whoop is telling you're leading me

well you took me there objection uh if whoop is telling a trainer or a coach hey this guy's showing some things physiologically and this guy's really run down is is the is the coach then empowered to sit the i think i think he should be so if if in 2012 a Popovich was able to say, hey, here's some data, David, that I had seen on these guys. Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. But instead, he charted a plane for them.

It's a brave new world. He charted a plane, and I happened to know that the plane blew a tire, and they had the ignomie of having to fly back to San Antonio commercially. David, in measuring strain, can we better understand? how much players should be resting or even what the schedule might be? I think that you raise a good point because what you can do

is you may be able to say what activity causes the most strain. And so rather than, this will become an interesting choice for coaches, rather than the rest a player from a game, maybe you should stop doing two a days

at some point or shootarounds or something else. So it has that micro potential as well as the macro of over a course of a hundred and some are days, how much strain can a players have in an 82 game season. So I think it's going to become increasingly relevant. And that's a discussion you can have on an anonymized basis. It doesn't have to deal with particular players. That every player shows up a certain way. And this is what it shows. At training camp, you shouldn't go right to three a day, and during the season

maybe shootarounds are not necessary on certain days and the like, or maybe, or as a season, just don't stretch it out or stretch it out? And by the way, I think anonymized data is a great point, because doing research with anonymized data can

not affect the players directly, but can have these huge implications going forward, working on something around concussions, where are there physiological responses that can better understand concussions. We don't need to know who the player was that was concussed. Correct. Correct. But just looking at the physiological data and the fact that this event occurred, you start to create a data set. We are in early days. Right. There's no doubt

about it. That's what's so exciting about the entire venture space. Everybody is in early days and we'll see how it all develops. Cannabis? You think it's going to make players have healthier careers based on some of the data we're seeing? It's fascinating for me to see the suggestion that in certain sports like football, cannabis can relieve symptoms of pain. Especially those different oils. Yes. Yes, or can relieve aches and pains

or can induce sleep. There's going to be an issue about how you relate to HTC and CBD, but maybe there's going to be some data that is useful from whoop to see whether that's going to be a subject that needs further exploration. Well, one thing we work with players on is, you know, monitoring

certain things that they do based on their behavior and then what the response is. So... Perfect. Yeah, if we know a player's trying a certain substance, we can see what the quantifiable... Well, we don't want them to try too many substances. That's not get... I don't want to get carried away. I think... Substance is the wrong word. My concern... Yeah, I think... I just

don't know the ultimate answer to the question, which is, has cannabis been unfairly demonized? My sense, based upon some of the work that's been done, as it may have been, but I don't know what the final verdict is going to be. I definitely think there's a brand perception issue, right? Where, like, when I hear cannabis, when I hear marijuana, the first thing that comes in mind is someone smoking a joint or hitting a bomb. Right, right, right.

And in reality, some of the techniques that we're talking about may look more like a tiger bomb or something about nature. Or, you know, medicinal marijuana. I think that's a great phrase. Whether it's a sleep aid, whether it's an aid in fighting epilepsy, and certain kinds of epilepsy, whether it has to do with reduction of pain for certain end-of-life situations.

I just think it needs to be figured out. And there's ways to administer these things, too, that don't involve smoke. So in general, I think the players are right to be pushing for it. No comment. No comment. I want to ask you a couple of quick, very quick hit questions, where you just give us a quick answer,

and then we'll let you go. So thank you so much for your time. My pleasure, always. Esports. You think e-sports can ever compete or outpace professional sports, where you have an individual game within e-sports that as a fan base and as a prize money base is actually bigger than one of the major sports league in the U.S.

You know, I think it's possible. I really do. I don't claim to be an expert. You can't be an expert in everything. I'm spending a fair amount of time on the appropriateness of sports betting and what it's going to yield, even cannabis, and what it should yield medically for athletes and the like. And e-sports is a big.

big deal. It's going to have a huge following. Whether it can keep it up or not, I don't know, but it's got a huge following. And I think we all have to be careful what we wish for because the likenesses are getting so real that there may someday be an e-sports league that focuses on a fabricated game with players who don't exist. So it's interesting. to me. That's a separate one. I actually don't warm to games where the idea is to go out

and kill everybody and the last man standing is, you know, that's the province of properties like the UFC. Oh, UFC, yeah, sure. I think you were saying that in relation to video games too. No, I think that's right. You look at a game like Fortnite which I think is the most popular game in the world right now. Right. And that's

a shoot-em-up type thing. That's right. I just I'm not interested in knowing about that. But I do know, what I do know is that everyone else is interested, and there's going to be a competition. And of course, e-sports aficionados love to write about the fact that more people went to the League of Legends final at Staples than went to Kobe Bryant's and Shaq's playoff games. Of course they do. And, you know, it just, it depends what your state of mind is, whether you want to go watch 10 people in a glass tent. killing each other through their video games.

But it's a competition. It's a serious competition. And it's leading to training, diet, exercise, all the things we talk about. I think the thing that people underestimate is how relatable it is. You know, when someone watches LeBron James Dunk, it's fascinating.

It's like exhilarating. It's also completely unrelatable. Whereas if you play, you know, an e-sports game, you can literally just pick up a controller. And in a second, you're moving this character the same way that the superstar is moving a character. Be careful, superstar, because maybe, I guess my rambling thought before was maybe he'll be replaced

by his icon or his character. And maybe there'll be a league one day without a commissioner, without owners, and without players. It'll just exist. Right. Think about it. And it can have betting too. Well, that's pretty close.

to Ready Player 1, isn't it? Have you read that book? Yeah. The Spilbert movie? Sure. We're just all in a virtual world competing. Exactly right. Here we are.

Right. Here we are. You know, you enter with your Bitcoin and you, you know, and you are who your character says you are. But it's, we're pushing up. I mean, I guess what I'm saying is that the likeness from the early days of video games, you know, you know, NBA. jam or whatever we called it were clunky characters now they're near perfect okay if you could own a team in any sports league um with the sole goal of making a profit on it in 10 years which league would you pick i would pick i would say the NBA and although i think mLS might come in

as a close second yeah i agree i think soccer It's growing. Yeah. But it's been growing. You know, people used to say to me... But people haven't saying that for... The NBA has great potential, David, in China. It'll always have great potential.

And I said, no, no, no, no, it's going to be real. And I think seeing what the world, that the world stops when the World Cup is being played, soccer is coming. But just as e-sports is coming, just as UFC is growing, just as two rugby leagues are fighting to take over some space. Well, here's the counter argument, right? All these things can't inevitably grow because it's entertainment. You know, at some point you could argue that now the NBA is competing with Netflix. Yes, we are. And Reed Hastings, the CEO of Netflix, had this great comment where he said,

we're competing with sleep. Yes, that's true. But interestingly enough, until it's stretching is stretching, but it hasn't broke. The amount of television that people has been watching continues to grow, which is astounding to me. It is. And so, you know, you can,

and of course now you can sleep, but then you can get up on demand and watch whatever you want, whenever you want it, wherever you wanted. So, you know, if you go into the subway and you can see people with their iPods in and they're listening to their podcast. Well, that's the biggest reason

that data on television has gone up is because they're also able to count the second screen stuff where... Yes. You know, you're able to look at these things. Yes. Before you never had a TV in your car or in the subway system. Oh, God, help us all.

Okay. But you're right. You know, but I don't know where it breaks. You know, we used to have people tell us 20 years ago, the spiral is over. Sports rights are going down. And for 20 years, they've been growing. Every year, one of the big accounting firms does an EPL, English Premier. league soccer and says, well, sports rights are up, but next year they're going to hit the ceiling.

And they're getting close probably, but it's interesting. There's always another way. The leagues go global. They open up offices around the world. There are markets not yet conquered that don't have the same kind of viewing. And if you step back and view the world, by the way, the U.S. is a, I won't say it's a small sample, but it's not an overall. overwhelming sample because we have 300 million people, 350, right? 350 compared to 6 billion. It's, you know... I think 7 even, right?

Well, I left out of continent probably, but, you know, there you go. Yeah. And so what the world is thinking about now, the NBA other sports league, is there are these billion-plus people in China, in India, in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. You know, you've got these huge markets that are nowhere near the size of. the U.S. market yet with every prospect of growing dramatically. Okay, here's a quick whoop-themed question. When you hear the expression, optimal performance, who is the first person that comes to mind?

Whoop. Is that the right answer? Yeah, that's a good answer. Because, by the way, the reason I appreciate that, I've come to appreciate it more, is that optimal performance has to be on the court and off the court. It has to be in a course with your lifestyle. Yeah, of course. I mean, that was the relationship between stress and recovery.

You can't just have one without the other. And sleep. Right. What was your evening routine or morning routine the night before and the morning of, you know, you had a big meeting or a big negotiation? I mean, this must have been every day for you. But say you really wanted to peak. What was your routine? Anything?

Totally backward. Anything special? I worked endlessly and probably stayed up later. So more on the stress. Yeah, I mean, I was the king in college and elsewhere, I was the king of all-nighters. And so you'd be fine, just... You know, just drink a lot of coffee before the meeting and go ahead. Did you have any travel tips?

I mean, you traveled all around the country, all around the world through your career. Do you ever take sleeping pills or anything? No, I never took sleeping pills, but we always did based upon what we thought and did. You just can't go to sleep when you get there. That's a bad thing. You've got to get up, force yourself to get out in the sunshine. of it's sunshine. Totally.

And do that. And do that. And then catch yourself in the second day, but not in the first. You've just got to keep moving. That's my tip. I think we've covered everything. David, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for doing this.

Thank you for being a great investor in Woop. It's a real pleasure. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for listening to the debut episode of the Woop Podcast. I thought David Stern would be an incredible first guest, and he certainly delivered. What an amazing, amazing dude.

You can visit whoop.com slash the locker for show notes and for links to the relevant topics of what we talked about. Make sure to subscribe, rate, and review the Whoop podcast on iTunes, Google, Spotify, or wherever across the internet that this podcast exists. You can find me online at Will Ahmed. I'd love to answer any questions that you have about this. podcast or listen to your suggestions regarding whoop questions about whoop you name it that's at will omit we'd also love to hear your feedback generally so check out at whoop on instagram facebook or twitter email the locker at woup.com with any thoughts or ideas you may have you can join the whoop community for $30 a month and get 24-7 access on your biometric data as well as analytics

across strain sleep recovery and more the membership comes with a free whoop strap 2.0 know. Our members include some of the best performance on the planet. I've been so grateful to see the growth on the consumer side. And so to all of you loyal members out there, we love you. Thank you for listening. And we wouldn't be here without you. We've got some great holiday promotions. We're now offering an annual membership where you can get 20% off the regular monthly rate. That's a great deal. And for our current members, visit our new holiday shop at whoop.com. We've got gift cards to extend your your membership at a discounted rate, premium gold and silver clasps. We've gotten amazing feedback on those, gold and silver clasps, seasonal bands, and a lot more. So if you're looking for some bling or you want an ugly sweater band for your ugly sweater office party, yes, check out

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