We talk to the former director of quantitative research and development for the Dallas Mavericks, Haralabos Voulgaris
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The Dumb Zone featuring Dan McDowell and Jake Kemp. A Dallas based podcast covering sports, news, and entertainment. These are the free episodes of The Dumb Zone. To receive the full catalogue, subscribe to our Patreon at Patreon.com/TheDumbZone
Hello. I'm Dan McDowell, longtime professional broadcaster. Why subscribe to our Patreon podcast? Well, perhaps you support our struggle to get out from
Speaker 2:under the oppressive thumb of
Speaker 1:the man. Or objectively, if you sign up at patreon.com/thedumbzone, you'll get the 2 episodes per week that are available on all podcast platforms like this one, plus an additional 2 episodes each week that are exclusive to Patreon. So subscribing on Patreon gets you 4 episodes per week. Oh, my. What a bargain.
Speaker 1:Now on to today's program. Rollabob.
Speaker 3:Rollabob.
Speaker 1:Rollabob. Alright. Alright. Alright. Alright.
Speaker 1:Hey, guys. Happy Tuesday. Show number 111. Show 111.
Speaker 3:Make a wish. What do
Speaker 1:you make of that? Oh, no.
Speaker 2:No. It's 1111.
Speaker 3:Oh, I don't know. Oh, no. I'm not into that voodoo nonsense.
Speaker 1:As a kid, I was would always little kid try to stay up to 11:11 and couldn't do it. I'm nevertheless And now I'm hoping to get to bed by 11:11.
Speaker 3:What exactly was the impetus behind this? Was there some sort of Just to see 11:11? Behind it? Just to see it.
Speaker 2:Wait. Make a wish and because
Speaker 1:I wasn't allowed to stay up late.
Speaker 2:Might come true.
Speaker 3:That's the I what a there's so many stupid things ingrained to our to our culture that it's just like, yeah. I'll blow a candle out and make a wish.
Speaker 2:Well, we used to not have things to do. No. No. Listen.
Speaker 1:It's gotta be a waste.
Speaker 2:Do it
Speaker 3:now. I mean, if you have cancer, I understand. There's a Make A Wish foundation. But if you're just some kid who's turning 8, like, Make A Wish. It's just stupid, if you think about it.
Speaker 3:All the old witchcraft y type things that we still
Speaker 2:Why won't you let people have hope?
Speaker 3:I want them to have hope. I just don't want it to be related to dates and candles.
Speaker 2:If it makes a 7 year old feel better to wish for a new bicycle by blowing out these flames,
Speaker 4:then just so be it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But he's not gonna get it. So then what? What if he does? Then he'll believe in God.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And not his parents who actually have been working 50 hour weeks.
Speaker 1:What do you think about teaching your kids about Santa?
Speaker 3:I'm a little bit conflicted on it. I talked to TC about this last week, and it's a interesting dynamic because he's been telling Izzy Santa's not real from the day that she could understand him. And once she got old enough to where she understood what he was saying, she was like, nah. Okay. I think you're wrong.
Speaker 3:Like, he tried as hard as he could.
Speaker 1:Everybody else is really into it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And she's like, I see him right there. TC's like, that's not real. That's a guy dressed up. And she's like, okay, dude.
Speaker 1:Because that was a very
Speaker 2:That's fine.
Speaker 1:I was conflicted with that too. Like Yeah. Because, you know, I don't have any harsh memory of it myself, but I just remember people, you know, some people cry when they find out about Santa. And it's like, well, why why purposely lie to your kid? I mean, we did the Tooth fairy?
Speaker 1:The tooth fairy because my kid, like I think one time, like, put a note Oh, yeah. Under there expecting the tooth fairy to answer. So I did like, I wrote it left handed so that it would look different than my handwriting. Okay. You know, she was very skeptical.
Speaker 3:I I know for me personally, and this is one of the things that while I appreciate all the help that I get from the it takes a village to raise a child, One of the things I struggle with the most is just I don't have much control over her inputs at all. And so there's no chance that with my mom, I could get away with being like Santa is not real. Like, my mom's a 6 month Christmas participator. Mhmm. And I just there's just no way I could get away with it.
Speaker 3:I would like to. If it were up to me and only me, things would be a lot different.
Speaker 1:A lot different. That's interesting.
Speaker 3:I mean, that's a that's a difference between your situation moving away and raising your kids and mine. Because for me, I get the help of having 5 other people that will watch our kid, but I also have her coming home and singing songs about Jesus. Mhmm. And I'm like and that's the other thing. I'm fighting that one, though.
Speaker 3:I'm like, Jesus is, you know, she's like she talk about heaven a lot now. And I'm like, heaven is in your heart. It's not a real place. Nobody goes nobody there's no place you go. It's in your heart.
Speaker 3:Like, when her hamster died at school, is Monty in heaven now? I'm like, heaven is not a place. Heaven is your memory of him, and he's in your heart. Now that's not gonna stick because I'm gonna have a wave of other people battling that. Whereas with you, you didn't have any help with your kids at all.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But you got to really control the narrative, which I I lost out of the gate.
Speaker 1:Yeah. The only struggle I had is with the lady I married. That's She had some different ideas about
Speaker 3:That's a lot easier. That's a, you know Right. It's only matrixes 1 by 1, you know? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Whereas I got You send her off to the in laws for a week of indoctrination. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Or even, you know, some some let more than others. But
Speaker 1:That's a weird bit because I remember I think it was my I don't know if it was my aunt, not uncle Gary, but aunt Terry. The first time I was ever at a Baptist church and saw, like, a human, a whole body dunked to get baptized, like, in the church, like, in this giant bathtub or so. I was like I've
Speaker 3:done it twice.
Speaker 1:You've done it.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It's done to you. Yeah. Twice? Because they're like, this one didn't stick. Yes.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Definitely. The first one felt like This is a bad seed. I think the first one, they knew that I was kinda, like, forced to do it. Like, it was I had no say in the matter at the first one.
Speaker 3:My mom had done it, and some guy came over to our house. And I was probably, like, 9 or 10, and he drew us like a a a photo not a photo. He drew us a drawing, and he drew, like, basically, what amounted to, like, a cliff with a gulf in the middle. You know, it says cliff over here, cliff over here, and then down on both sides. So it said, like, you, and then I think it said, heaven.
Speaker 3:And over here, he drew my family. So I'm by myself on one side. My family's over here on the other side. And I think at the in the the pit, it said, like, accept Christ or hell. Some something like that.
Speaker 3:It was very clear to me that they were saying, do you wanna be with them?
Speaker 1:There's so there's no middle ground
Speaker 3:in this equation. There's no And I had no theological underpinning to understand you do this stuff. So I did it that time. And then in probably junior high, I did have, like, a probably 2 year period of being somewhat, like, into church. Uh-huh.
Speaker 3:You know, church camp,
Speaker 1:VBS. You weren't against it?
Speaker 3:No. I wasn't against it. And in fact, we should talk about this more at length at some time because this is something wholly foreign to you. Church camp is a wild experience. Like, dude, it is it is they are coming at you.
Speaker 3:It is emotional sensory overload.
Speaker 1:So you talk about grooming.
Speaker 3:That's Dude, it was crazy.
Speaker 1:I'm really attempting that.
Speaker 3:And they, my brother was there actually for this one, and they had some, some deal where older kids and in my case, older sibling. If you didn't have a sibling, you just found a younger kid. You had to wash their feet while, like, Christian music is playing. Jesus. And I was bawling my eyes out Like, I'm a bad brother.
Speaker 3:Sorry. I'm a bad big brother. And he's crying. And it was it's and then they're like and then, like, they once they see you crying, they're like, wanna get taped? They're like, we got him right now.
Speaker 3:He's vulnerable. And I'm like, yes.
Speaker 1:And so you did it again? I did it again.
Speaker 3:Yeah. At the at church camp? When I got home. You know, there was there's nothing
Speaker 1:So wait. The first time they did it at your house?
Speaker 3:No. No. No. They came to my house and they To
Speaker 1:give you the pitch.
Speaker 3:To give me the pitch, and I was like, yeah. Sure. I don't wanna I wanna be with my family.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I don't wanna Yeah. What 9 year old in that situation is going to say
Speaker 3:I might have been 10 or 11. I don't know. But I'm still very young.
Speaker 1:Any little kid under full control of your, you know, Yeah. Parental units, there's no real op opportunity to you've not really even started thinking for yourself too much. That's probably teenage years for sure. Right? The Yeah.
Speaker 3:So that's, that's weird, man. Interestingly enough, though, the second time I went, when when I went to church camp and I came back and got baptized the second time, while I was very excited about, about Christ at that point, Also, I smoked weed there. At the church camp? Yeah. And I did not smoke weed again for probably 5 years.
Speaker 3:Didn't smoke in high school at all. Not once.
Speaker 2:Well, the it's a crazy experience because there's the mix of, like, hardcore church kids, Then there's a middle section of kids that kinda just wanna go hang out with their friends for a few days away from parents. And then there's the kids that are sent there that are that their parents are hoping to get fixed.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so when you put these three groups together, it is an incredible time because in the morning and during the day, you're, like, playing capture the flag and you're running around. Softball. Yeah. And then
Speaker 3:Well, 2 on 2.
Speaker 2:And then you swim, and then you go listen to church music for 2 hours.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's a wild time. It's a wild week.
Speaker 3:It it it really is. But, yeah, there was a there was an older kid there who played football. I think he was in, like, 10th or 11th grade. He played football at our high school, and he was badass. And he was he seemed like, Bodie to me.
Speaker 3:Like, he he believed in God and everything, but he also, like, smoked pot. And he was like, to me and my buddy who were there, I brought a I brought a guy with me. In fact, I believe that was, part of the deal is my mom was like, I want you to go, but you can bring a friend and we'll pay for it. And we we just ran through the sports leagues because I had a ringer. He was not associated with the church at all.
Speaker 3:Who's this guy? It's not fair. And, yeah, the older kid was like, hey. Before, music tonight, come on down.
Speaker 2:And that's
Speaker 1:where you smoke pot?
Speaker 3:Church music in that setting? Oh my gosh. Pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:They got the fog machine.
Speaker 3:The lights. Like, it's like the Grammys.
Speaker 2:And the god squad ripping stuff. Oh, yeah.
Speaker 1:The first time you ever smoked pot?
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah. And it was like I said, I never I didn't again until well into my fresh year of college.
Speaker 1:But he wasn't a hardcore church guy?
Speaker 3:No. But he was he was spiritual.
Speaker 1:Be okay. Because I know
Speaker 3:he was
Speaker 1:The hard well, I wouldn't say that, but the the kids that went to Catholic school, they partied way harder. There's probably somebody in my school partying, you know, but I never I I tried pot once when I was in high school, and it was at my dad's wedding. Yes. You know, we kinda drank some wine coolers, but I was, pretty much a just a big sports nerd. And then once I befriended these other people, you know one of them, but I I'm not gonna say now.
Speaker 1:But once, you know, college age and everything and but I met them. They had gone to the local, you know, Catholic high school. And I would would come to find out when they were in high school, they were doing Coke. I'm like Yeah. What?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think I remember hearing that about Fort Worth Christian. Like, you know, it might it's by no means, were they're not I mean, we were having overdoses at my high school, from pills. Mhmm. But I remember hearing it like, man, those kids over a 4th Christian.
Speaker 3:Like, they go hard. Like, I don't remember Coke necessarily, but it was like, they had money.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe that was it.
Speaker 3:So they would either think it because you have you you could
Speaker 1:afford to go to the the Catholic high school.
Speaker 3:Exactly. Whereas, like, our and I never did this, but the kids in my school would just, like, raid their grandma's cancer medicine. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Some of it too is die. Is having naive parents.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Whether you think Catholic
Speaker 3:yeah. Like Christian parent. Yeah.
Speaker 1:They're taking care of it?
Speaker 3:He could never be doing that. Whereas, if you kinda have a little rougher crowd, you're like,
Speaker 2:I can But also I have a
Speaker 1:good babysitter. It's their school. It's the Catholic church or it's whatever.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But the yeah. Yes. The parents think you're hanging around good kids and so you have a little bit more freedom. The parents don't really ask because it's like, well, you you're all Christian school kids.
Speaker 2:I'm not gonna check-in on you.
Speaker 3:That's a big part of it. A big part of it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, if you know you have little Jake running around, you're gonna question everything he does. Yeah.
Speaker 3:The other thing too is and, again, this is not something I ever experienced, but I certainly dreamed about it is, people would hook up. But that was a big you know, it might just be like making out, but that was a big player for the whole week. It's like trying to figure out if there's any girls here that like you. So maybe that's why I started crying is I just needed to put on airs. But it was a lot, dude.
Speaker 3:And I then we did, like, did you ever do, like there was one in the winter. I can't remember what it was called, but
Speaker 2:Winter was popular for the lock in.
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's kinda what we did, and it was at the embassy. Or no. What's the one right there on Grapevine? Is that an Embassy Suites
Speaker 1:on 26? Yeah. By,
Speaker 3:like, Bass Pro Shop? Yeah. We had one there. And, my only memory of that really is that in the middle of, like, is it Vespers? Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, the evening acoustic sessions and stuff.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:They had us in, like, a little ballroom. And, you know, it's like low light. There's guys up there with acoustic guitars. And I said I had to go to the bathroom. And instead, and I'm probably 13 at this point, I went to the bar to watch Major beat Washington in the holiday bowl.
Speaker 3:And when they found me, they were not happy because I've been gone for about an hour and a half. I'm like, fuck, dude. He's a major. I'm gonna rank the, figures you're throwing at me right now in order. 2 Christ 1 major.
Speaker 3:I'm not out on your guy, but
Speaker 2:My guy's dealing right now.
Speaker 3:My guy is absolutely There's time dealing.
Speaker 1:There's a lot
Speaker 2:of time
Speaker 1:for everyone. Right? Alright. We have a, cool guest book today. Horalabob.
Speaker 1:We only need one name for him. Right? Horalabob Vulgaris? Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, I
Speaker 1:think his name is Horalabob. We're gonna find out. We are gonna find out. I've heard Haralabob all my life, or all my life that I've known who he is. I don't think I've known who he you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2:Anyway I got you.
Speaker 1:We're gonna have him in a few minutes. So, and I have on my run sheet here, Jake's assorted NFL notes.
Speaker 3:That's right.
Speaker 1:That's a new feature that we're starting today. So, yeah, let's pause for a second, and, we'll be back with Haralabob, we hope.
Speaker 3:The damsel
Speaker 2:damsel. Emmett, they say everything's bigger in Texas, and that includes Jerry Jones' new stadium. What do you think of the new place?
Speaker 5:I think the new stadium
Speaker 2:is absolutely stunning. And for fans who are
Speaker 5:going to the ball game, they have a smoke it up and serenade the whole stadium itself. To me, tailgating is is a part of game day experience. And what we found is that 42% of the people prefer pork over the other meat. And at tailgate parties, I can understand why because pork is is easy. It's easy to cook.
Speaker 5:It's simple, and it's, it's affordable. And so going to game day stadium, look for everybody out there that'll be tailgating to be using some type of pork meat on their grills.
Speaker 3:You're listening to The Dumb Zone.
Speaker 5:The Puppet.
Speaker 1:That's kinda where it goes, so we had to do so. We are recording live to tape a little bit early today. Generally, we get going around noon ish. We got going a little before 11 because of the guest I was mentioning is not in this time zone. He is, far, far away.
Speaker 1:The other side of the world, Jake. He is Bob Volgares. I'll just go with that. First of all, we really appreciate your time.
Speaker 2:2nd of all, I would like to say
Speaker 1:so I heard you, recently on a different podcast, listening to some different things you've done. The host had said, am I pronouncing your name right? It's Heralobos. And you said, yes. That's right.
Speaker 4:Horalabos. Horalabos. Yes.
Speaker 2:Okay. Because, I guess I got
Speaker 1:to know you, I got to know who you are and hear you and everything with Simmons for years. And he always said, Horalabob.
Speaker 4:That's my Twitter name. It's kind of a nickname because I go by Bob. So, somewhere along the line, Bob and Heralobos turned into Heralabob. I just kinda ran with it.
Speaker 1:So Okay. Heralobos. I'd like to get that right, but,
Speaker 3:it doesn't sound like he cares that much.
Speaker 1:No. That's that's that's there are more important things.
Speaker 4:Ways to make Heralobos more complicated, but I guess adding in another name that's very similar to it. Another way to make it more complicated, so I decided to roll with it. Works.
Speaker 1:So, you're in Spain right now. Heralobos or Bob is a former professional gambler. He's currently the owner of a Spanish soccer club. And so he's, over there right now ruling with his iron fist. You may remember him from the Dallas Mavericks as, he was the director of quantitative research and development.
Speaker 1:As I understand it, you totally made that title up.
Speaker 4:I made it up. I was like, I'm not an American, so I think I was cognizant of getting a visa approved, as quick and fast as possible. And so I think having a a title that makes sense with my expertise, which is quantitative research and development, was was part of it. Mark's pretty like, call yourself whatever you want. It's kinda fly by the seat of your pants, guys.
Speaker 4:So I was like, how does this sound? And he was like, sounds sounds good. So I think if I did it all over again, I probably would've went something more along the lines of basketball strategy or something, or maybe not had a title at all and just kinda hung out in the background. That probably would've been probably been a sharper move in retrospect. But, yeah, quantitative research development made up title.
Speaker 4:That's But pretty accurate in terms of what I was doing to be perfectly fair.
Speaker 1:That's interesting as you say. You're you made something up, and it's like what you name yourself. But is it going to be taken seriously by you're saying the visa as you're trying to get a visa? So we named this, we used to be called the Hang Zone in our radio, era, and now we're the dumb zone. And we find that very difficult to try and book guests or, you know, we're trying to
Speaker 4:a lot. When I when I saw the message and then I I saw the name of the thing, I was like, okay. These guys, at least they don't take themselves too seriously.
Speaker 1:Okay. So it's not bad to you.
Speaker 3:It's interesting though because he had to sort of gin up the title, for the visa purposes, but I wonder if whenever that title was presented to the the old heads on staff, they were like, what does that mean? Yeah.
Speaker 4:To be honest, there was no presentation to the old heads on staff. I don't think it was kind of, you know, I had I I think a lot of people yeah. Possibly, they didn't know. There wasn't really a lot of of of organizational structure I would say with the Mavericks not, you know, I think Mark maybe would even admit to this. It wasn't super well thought out in that regard.
Speaker 4:And so, when Mark wanted to hire me because I was working a lot with the coaching staff, I think he wanted me first before we agreed to any terms, he wanted me first to like get vetted by coach Carlisle. So I met with coach Carlisle, spent some time with him, and then, and so that was really the only person I really met. I met I met I met Donnie for the first time because I was, you know, kind of shadowing Carlyle around, just talking to him, meeting with him, and then he had to go run practice and so he just deposited me in Donnie's office. So the first time I met Donnie I got deposited in his office. He started talking to me, got kind of awkward, didn't really know what was going on.
Speaker 4:So then I left, and then the guy who was his assistant, I think his assistant at the time, a guy named Max, I guess knew who I was and told him who I was. And I guess the gist of the story was Donnie realized I was wealthy in some way. So he called me back in there and tried to sell me a Futsal franchise. That's a true story. He's our oh, and, a Mexican, G League franchise.
Speaker 4:Those are the 2 things he tried he tried to
Speaker 3:Hustling. Always.
Speaker 4:It's just funny. He was always always looking for a deal in some way. Not in a
Speaker 2:bad way, but it was kinda funny because
Speaker 4:I was just like, yeah. I'm not here to buy a I don't know what Futsal is, and I have no interest in owning a Mexican Gigli franchise. So maybe I'm not the guy for you, but it was yeah. It was pretty entertaining.
Speaker 1:Okay. So you didn't actually have to, like, get vetted by Donnie, you're saying?
Speaker 4:No. No. I didn't.
Speaker 1:Which I
Speaker 4:don't I don't I think, you know, in in in fairness to Donnie, I don't I don't think he knew who I was, what I was doing, or why I was there. And so maybe that got us off on the wrong foot right away. To be fair, he was always very nice to me in person, especially the first little while. And then I think based on how things went in terms of of the roles of how Mark, you know, because Mark's it was in my estimation, I think even by his, he's he's the ultimate decision maker there. So I think once people realize that I had Mark's ear as well, I think then things started to change a little bit.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, Donnie was always very nice to me up until, like, the very, very, very end.
Speaker 3:It's interesting you mentioned the organizational structure because I I guess I don't know how every NBA team works. But for a long time, I thought obviously, Mark is the ultimate decision maker, but I've just thought, I don't really know how this team is run. And even up to today, you know, I know that Michael Findlay is involved, but he's not the GM, but they have a GM in Nico Harrison, but he's supposed to be working hand in glove with Jason Kidd. It's it's all it's all very
Speaker 1:Derf is around.
Speaker 3:Derf is around somehow, involved. But, yeah, it it's always just seemed like Cuban valued this sort of we're gonna throw a bunch of personalities and intellect into a room and just see what happens.
Speaker 4:There's some there's some merit to that. I think, like, detailed, structure oriented,
Speaker 2:everyone had a job title,
Speaker 4:who they reported to, etcetera, corporate structure oriented, everyone had a job title, who they reported to, etcetera, corporate structure. That has its benefits. It also has its negatives in some way because it it kind of prevents the the free flow of ideas, I think. And if you have someone like Mark who's who wants to be very involved and who deems himself to be, like, you know, the guy who should be making the final decision. I think I think it it can work.
Speaker 4:Just everyone has to get along. I think that's the key thing. I can't speak to the other how other teams operate. I know I've, you know, I've interviewed with a couple different teams and I think it's it's a lot of times the coach is involved. Sometimes he isn't involved.
Speaker 4:They're consulted. No. The one the one thing I'll say in in defense of the Mavericks and any NBA team is, you know, the the the number one goal of a general manager in my mind is is is most most of them, their goal is to save their job. And so that doesn't necessarily line up with the kind of the the the the goal of what the team is, so they don't have the team in mind. So but an owner has the team in mind.
Speaker 4:So like for my football club, I we don't have a sporting director, which is Spanish version of or a football version of a GM. I'm the sporting director, and I'm making all of the decisions in that regard. And I think it lines up really, really well in that because I have I'm team's long term best interests. Whereas if you get the coach involved,
Speaker 2:he's got 1 year left on his contract.
Speaker 4:Is he really gonna wanna develop a young player versus signing a veteran? So it makes sense, but yeah, it wasn't super organized and it definitely didn't contribute to a, I would say healthy work environment the way the Mavericks were run, but it wasn't, it wasn't like a frat house either, which I think I've read a couple different people describe it that way or allude to it. It wasn't like that. It was still professional. It just wasn't, you know, it wasn't a Fortune 500 company.
Speaker 1:I think the frat house thing came out after that. Who was the guy that had, like, a condom fall out of his jeans, pants.
Speaker 3:Sports Illustrated. I'm gonna call it pants DJ.
Speaker 1:Okay. That was, was that before you got
Speaker 4:there? Yeah. Much much before I got when I got there, Synth was running things and it was, my office was actually in the business the business side because there's no room in the department for for for my for my but I, you know, I always worked out of the basketball department. The people who worked in my department, the other quants, because there were there were several of them, they all worked in the, you know, on the basketball, condom
Speaker 3:never saw a condom on the floor.
Speaker 4:Hey. Definitely did not. No.
Speaker 1:It feels like he we've always thought, like, Cuban is
Speaker 4:But it really is the dumb zone, isn't it? I mean,
Speaker 2:he's really
Speaker 4:getting the next country.
Speaker 1:Cuban really is he's the GM, though. It just feels like that's actually what he does, but he hires some people under him.
Speaker 2:I don't
Speaker 4:think that's unusual. I don't know if that's true or not, but at the end of the day, you had a franchise that's worth somewhere in the neighborhood of 3 to $5,000,000,000 why wouldn't you guy why wouldn't you want the guy who's owns the team and cutting the super max checks to be the one making the final decisions? I mean, I don't see anything wrong with it. It's it's not uncommon, at all. You might think it is, but it really isn't.
Speaker 2:In fact
Speaker 4:in fact, the Luca trade was negotiated by Mark and the owner of the Hawks. They're the ones who finally got the deal done. So are you selling me the Hawks are also? You know, there's there's lots of there's lots of examples of this, I think.
Speaker 1:How did your association with, Mark Cuban begin?
Speaker 4:I don't remember, to be honest. Email, this predated Twitter, so it was probably email conversation. I worked and a lot of people don't know this, but I also worked for Mark and the Mavericks when I took a year off gambling, starting about a month or so before the all star break the year before you guys won the title. So I worked from the pre all star break all the way through to the start of the NBA, the following NBA season when you guys won the championship in 2011. I was contracted by Mark.
Speaker 4:So I was doing similar stuff for him then, advising him on players, player trades, etcetera. Most people don't know that, but that happened. So, I think I had to start somewhere via email. I think also there was like a couple articles that were written about me, and then I think that gave him more like you know, for me, I wanted to see if I liked it. At that time, I wasn't financially in a position where I wanted to give up gambling for more than a year.
Speaker 4:So I went back to gambling because I wasn't gonna go work for the Mavericks for a small amount of money. And then by the time I actually started working for the team as an official non contracted, but official team employee, my financial situation had changed. And I think also the amount
Speaker 2:of money he was willing to offer me also was was a lot more
Speaker 4:more in my mind substantial, even though it didn't really materially impact my life in any way.
Speaker 3:So I've heard you talk about this before, but it seems like you sort of had a healthy symbiotic relationship of respect with Rick.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Well, I want you to respect him. He's a great coach and a hard worker. And Yeah. He just He was one
Speaker 3:He he's he's a he's a difficult guy in our dealings with him.
Speaker 4:Have a symbiotic relationship and how I would define a symbiotic relationship. But in his mind, I'm sure it was as symbiotic as it gets. I mean, I think, you know, it's interesting for me looking back. I think I have to look back through the lens of how everyone viewed me. And so I think a lot of people are out to for self preservation.
Speaker 4:I'm not saying Rick was, but a lot of the people I interacted with in the office were were either like, okay. I have to either pretend I'm this guy's friend because it'll help me with my job, or I have to actually try to be his friend because I wanna get to know and learn a little bit more about the business of analytics or the approach. And then there were some people who were like, I'm never gonna get this. This is outside my lane. If the organization is going in this direction, I'm gonna become a lamp lighter, when electricity becomes about and I'm just gonna be, you know, kind of evolved out.
Speaker 4:So with Rick, you know, we worked really, really close together. We never really had any issues at all up until the very, very end when I left before, like, in March of the year. Everyone thought I was around for the whole year, but I actually just left at that point just because we we had had a couple instances pop up where I felt like he didn't have my back. But yeah, I was like, you know, Rick's a tactical guy. He's very psychological.
Speaker 4:His idea of a great conversation is you both argue with each other for an hour and 30 minutes, and then you feel strongly enough about your point that you're you're fine being, in a in a real kind of, don't wanna say hostile, but like a real, you know, it's a real passionate conversation. And then the next day, if things go well, you repeat the whole process all over again. That's kind of his approach. He's very tactical. He's very, he's very sharp, like in the way he, conducts himself.
Speaker 4:And, and so for me, I I appreciated that level of kind of drive to win, which was which was about which I wanted to do also. And I thought Rick Rick also really respected my ideas. He didn't necessarily agree with everything I said, but he respected the amount of work and detail I went into providing my opinions on things because they weren't just, I wasn't just spitballing stuff I was doing, you know, in some cases, lots and lots of research or in other cases had ideas that I already had predated when I was building my models to predict outcomes of basketball games. So Rick in my mind was someone I enjoyed working with and also helped me learn how to deal with people in sports better as well, because I've learned that this is very common amongst coaches who have to lead men. They have to have this type of confidence in their beliefs and a way of going about things.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, I had a good relationship with Rick.
Speaker 1:Can you give an example of something where you didn't have your back?
Speaker 4:You know, after after I after the article came out, and we had, like, a conversation. This was, like, maybe a couple of days before he decided to to quit the Mavericks. I was like, hey. You know, you're next bro. Like, you you think you think you think you think this kid doesn't like me?
Speaker 4:You know? Like, it's not really about me. So, you know, you need to figure that shit out. An example was just like, I think, you know, maybe in my mind, you know, he he when I when I approached him with this, he said, no, it wasn't intentional. But it certainly occurred to me that it was intentional that some of the decisions on who would play or who wouldn't play, you know, the numbers say might be taking this code from the players.
Speaker 4:Like, hey. This isn't my decision. This is foisted upon me by the analytics nerd or whatever. But he he never disrespected me to my in person, and I don't I don't know that was the case, but it definitely occurred to me that it made things easier for him to have some plausible deniability with the with with the because the players didn't, you know, people think I had a bad relationship with the players. I didn't have a good relationship or a bad relationship.
Speaker 4:I just didn't have a relationship. There's some players who I had a friendly relationship with outside of basketball that I was friends with. But for the most part, I never talked to the players about basketball. So I think, if you're having to have a tough conversation with someone like Wes Matthews, who's a pretty confident, you know, well paid veteran NBA player, it could make things easier to say like, hey, you know, it's kinda out of my hands, but you know, the numbers say that we can't play you. We gotta play this guy.
Speaker 4:We gotta play DOTA over you. We gotta develop DOTA over you. But, you know, so that I don't know that happened, but it it kind of felt to me like based on my own intuition, that's what might've happened. So
Speaker 3:One of those decisions that, I think you were pretty heavily involved was the Clippers series decision to start Boban.
Speaker 4:Correct.
Speaker 3:And the other thing I think in the it was the same game in that game 7 where but Batum had been bodying Brunson basically every time he touched the floor that whole series. He seemed just too small to play. And he played 10 minutes in game 7, scores 2 points. And I feel like at that point, that's when the Mavericks decided we're not going to extend Jalen Brunson, you know, even they even though they had a little bit of time to do it. So what were your opinions on Brunson at that time?
Speaker 3:And, obviously, now that
Speaker 4:and we're we're we're twofold. I I had a funny interaction with Jalen Brunson's father last year at a at a Lakers Knicks game where he was eyeballing me from the court, from from the bench. Like, like he knew who I was, Jalen knew who I was. I think there was this rumor that was spread by one of the, members of the staff, which was kind of true. It was true.
Speaker 4:I was trying to trade Jalen, but it wasn't because I didn't think he was a good player. It was because for whatever reason, they signed this guy to a contract that meant that we didn't have his rights anymore to match. So he wasn't gonna have he can have a classical rookie contract. So we were either gonna have to overpay for his services, and not overpay, but pay a lot with with the ability where he still might wanna leave. We had no leverage, and he was also the only asset the Mavericks had after after the the KP trade.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Because we, you know, we didn't have we didn't have any draft picks we could trade really freely. So my opinion of him was wasn't so much long term that he wasn't going to be a good player because now to be fair, did I think he was gonna be this good? Absolutely not. The amount of work he's put in is is is is really, really a testament, I think, to how hard he's worked and what a good professional athlete he was.
Speaker 4:But yeah, my my opinion on him at that time wasn't, he's not a good player, he'll never be a good player. My opinion of him was just in this series, he's not really, you know, as long as they put the 2 on him, we're not getting any advantage here. That was basically the, you know and all my communications are via email, so it's very easy for me to go back and look at them and and see exactly what I said, and and that's basically what it was. Like, this is a matchup where we don't have an advantage on. We don't have an advantage when they go once they figure out how to go small and and play 5 smalls versus us, we're fucked.
Speaker 4:I said that the previous year when we played them, they didn't figure it out that year, Clippers. They only ran it a few times when they were losing. And then once they got back, they went back to their traditional Zubac lineup or big lineup. The next year, the conversation was how do we you know, at some point when we're up 20, I I was still sending, you know, communicating with with Rick. Like, hey.
Speaker 4:At some point, they're gonna figure this shit out, and they're gonna go small. What is our plan? And our plan was, well, when they do it, we'll figure it out. I was like, well, it's better to do it when we're up to 0 than when it's 22 or when it's 32. You know what I mean?
Speaker 4:So that was kind of that. And so the bull bond situation was one of the rules was we couldn't not start KP. That That was like a rule for whatever reason. I don't know why that was a rule, but it was a rule. But the lineup when they went small, you know, KP's still coming off an injury.
Speaker 4:He has to guard a small, he has to guard in space. It's very difficult for us to defend, and we weren't gaining anything offensively at the other end because he wasn't able to post up those smaller players in an efficient manner, and it was clogging the lane. So given the ability given the notion that we had to start him, the other option was okay. Let's not allow them to go small by putting in Boban, which forces their hand. Now we can get some players in foul trouble.
Speaker 4:We can get some offensive rebounds. They had nobody who could guard Boban. Like, Boban was people think, oh, what a what a bananas idea, but it worked. And the whole idea was is it was gonna be something that would that steal us a game at some point. That was kind of the idea.
Speaker 4:It wasn't gonna work long term, It wasn't a game 7 thing. We didn't do it in game 7. You know, if you remember when we did it. So we did it earlier than that. The ball bond moves earlier.
Speaker 4:So and it worked. It it bought us a game. We went zone so we didn't have to really worry about the defense. We lived with our above the break threes. Hoped they got a little bit unlucky from 3, and then got them in foul trouble on the other end.
Speaker 4:So it kinda worked. Unfortunately, it didn't work in game 7. So at that point, we were out of moves. That makes makes
Speaker 2:sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's that's fascinating because I remember as a fan, fans are like, well, they're just trying to throw something against the wall. But there's actual well thought out reasoning behind starting Boban.
Speaker 4:I have the emails from even it's funny. I have, like, the the video clips from the year before when we put Bullbon in there in the pre in the bubble in the playoff series. And he just put people under the basket. I mean, there was like a couple clips of Marcus Morris trying to guard him. It was effective.
Speaker 4:Funny, funny anecdote to that is like last year, I about a year or a year ago this time, I'm at some like, LA celebrity's birthday party, in LA. And I see Ty Lou there, and I'm like, I don't really you know, I don't know Ty Lou, but I know I knew Kenny Atkinson who was on staff at the time and we had talked about this. And so I was like, let's see. I'm gonna go talk to Ty Lou. I'm introducing myself.
Speaker 4:So I introduced myself to Ty Lou. I was like, hey. I was the guy who worked for the Mavericks. And he's like, oh, you're the gambler.
Speaker 2:And I was
Speaker 4:like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's like,
Speaker 2:was that you who wanna do Bullbon? I was
Speaker 4:like, yeah. I was like, we fucking hated that. You guys did that. We were like, fuck. That was good, man.
Speaker 4:It was that's actually a cool moment.
Speaker 1:So Yeah. Playoffs playoff series are are fun like that in the, the the moves. You going back though a couple minutes ago, you mentioned something that I don't think really gets brought up enough, which is the initial Jalen Brunson contract is the real culprit.
Speaker 4:That's the that's that's really all there is to it. I mean, people talk about, oh, we didn't do this. We didn't do that. Like, why are you trying to save you know, you get an extra year at a cheaper rate when you sign up for that 4 year whatever contract, but you don't have the restricted free agency rights. So, I mean, I don't know who is who negotiated that contract.
Speaker 4:I don't think it's fair to blame Donnie on that. I don't just because I mean, it could I don't know. Right? So he's the GM, but if it's a bad idea, let's say it's it's not his idea, then, then he should try to convince the coach not or the owner not to do it. You know, part of your job as a general manager is to is to is to, you know, go to bat for bad ideas that you, you know, talk talks.
Speaker 4:Like Mark has a lot of ideas. My job was to kind of like give my opinion on his ideas. And if there were some that were really, really ones that I disagreed with strongly, really be confident enough to to not care if if if I was wrong at the end of the day. And I think a lot of people were were acting out of self preservation. So I don't know whose whose idea that was, but it was definitely a bad idea.
Speaker 3:I've always heard, and I don't know if this is true, that it was about just saving a little bit more on the cap so they could pursue Giannis in another Maverick pipe dream like they did with Dwight Howard many years ago.
Speaker 2:At the end
Speaker 4:of the day, if Giannis wants to you know, Miami has proven this time and time again. If a star wants to come to you, no matter how much cap room you have, you can make things happen.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 4:possibly, but it was also explained to me that you get an extra year of, maybe it's a Janus thing and maybe, but it's also you get an extra year of lower salary for it's 4 years versus 3 years whereas your 4th year is is higher. But yeah, you lose. It's like in a gambling term, that's called a negative free roll where like this player ends up, you know, it's a small investment, the option of him of of of him becoming a superstar. And now you'll, you know, now you're paying like the amount you're paying more versus the amount savings. Yeah.
Speaker 4:It was a bad move. That was that was the hardest thing. And So for me, it was it was less about whether he was good enough to play in the Clippers series. That that's not really relevant to his long term future with the club. The other part is his contract kind of aligns with with Lucas in some ways.
Speaker 4:So, like, how much cap space do you have if you you do sign them to an extension? So I yeah. But to to to your point, there's less to do with the Nikko or whoever, you know, fucking up the extension earlier in the year and more to do with the fact that he was on this ridiculous contract where he was gonna become an unrestricted free agent versus a restricted free agent.
Speaker 1:So the the Porzingis trade happened, what, 4 months into your tenure?
Speaker 4:Correct.
Speaker 1:So what what was your involvement with that?
Speaker 4:0. 0 involvement in that trade, which is to say that, my theory on that, I don't know if this is true or not, but this is kinda what I talked to before, is, you know, Mark had asked me to to rank who I thought were some of the best restricted free agents earlier on in the year. So I just, you know, had KP was on the list, like, here's a guy I would look at as a restricted free agent, thinking I'm gonna have another year's worth of data to really evaluate him. I didn't realize it was, hey. These are the guys we're gonna go for.
Speaker 4:So it wasn't I had zero involvement in the trademark. I think it sent me a message. And this is the only trade that I didn't really have any involvement in. And I think that this was something that wasn't Mark's idea. I think this is a narrative that I've kind of I've asked about, but I think it's like part of it is what I talked about earlier.
Speaker 4:A GM's job is to save his job. And so if you're a GM and you have this new guy who's around, who's really close with the coaching staff, really close with the owner, what can I do to what kind of
Speaker 2:splash can I make here? So I
Speaker 4:think the KP Trade was that. I think think the KP trade was that. I think it was Mark, obviously, who's on board for sure, but I had I received a message from Mark. We might be doing something. I think you're gonna like it.
Speaker 4:Can you tell me what it is? No. I'm stupid stupidstitious is what he said. So, so I didn't know. Now would I have vetoed the trade or said no?
Speaker 4:I I don't have any idea. I certainly wouldn't have given up picks. The way I understood it, the conversations were going. I had talked about absorbing, Tim Hardaway Junior and Courtney Lee's contracts for picks because that was the year KD and Kyrie were gonna be free agents, and so the Knicks were actively trying to get cap space. So our conversation somehow went from, I think it was Deandre Jordan, or Wes Matthews or something like this, in a swap.
Speaker 4:I can't remember exactly for Tim Hardaway junior, who I liked at the time. I thought he was he was a decent valued pick decent valued player, and and in exchange for getting some some kind of compensation from them, absorbing salaries and giving them that's kind of where where it started. And I think it ended up with Porzingis somehow. But, yeah, I had no involvement in the trade, which isn't to say I then when the trade was explained to me and they told me picks are involved, my initial reaction was great. What pics did we get?
Speaker 4:It's a true story. And then when I was told that we gave up pics, I was like, oh. And then, of course, you don't wanna be the guy who's like, you know, oh, what a stupid idea. Why don't we do this? Da da da.
Speaker 4:Like, you know, everyone was talking about, like Don, this is how Donnie does. This is what he does. He's a deal maker. This is his expertise. This is what he's good at.
Speaker 4:This is why we need him, etcetera. So, you know, I was excited, at the possibility, but it wasn't, you know, I've said this before, you don't align superstar, like, a future superstar, like rookie, like Luca and his rookie contract. You don't even know what you have yet. Why are you in a rush to pair someone with him for the next that you're gonna have to max out? Yeah?
Speaker 4:You have to sign them in free agency. You're you're, you know, similar to same thing I talked about with Halliburton and and and and Siakam. It's like, what is your rush? One guy is much older than the other guy. They don't really align, and you don't even really know what you have yet.
Speaker 4:So my my belief was we don't have to win right now. We can just kind of like chill out, build the team, see where we're at, and and then we ended up making, like, a franchise altering decision. But, hey, not my team. Wasn't wasn't really my my thing. So you just kinda be a good team player and try to make the best of it.
Speaker 1:And then once you acquire him, having giving ups given up so much, you had to you had to sign him. Right? There's no
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Of course. The idea you were never going to, you know, same same thing with Kyrie. Right? You're never gonna give up assets unless you're pretty confident the player is gonna resign. And, you know, the only Kyrie, Kyrie was unrestricted, but not the only the only teams that had money to offer him weren't gonna be interested in him, whereas KP was unrestricted.
Speaker 4:So, like the idea that KP was gonna opt out of his contract, nobody in the history of the NBA has opted out of that contract. Same thing everyone was panicking, when the art club on Miki mobile. Look, oh, look, it's so upset that Donnie and Mark Spears went on on ESPN, Breathless League, almost in tears talking about how Luke is gonna hold a press conference, which was already scheduled ahead of time because it was an Olympic Slovenian press conference. But that was something that was spun by his camp and and the, so yeah.
Speaker 2:No. You have to
Speaker 4:you have to resign the guy. Otherwise, what are you doing here? I know it wasn't even a rental because KP wasn't even healthy. So you didn't get a half year rental. He was he didn't play.
Speaker 4:So
Speaker 1:Something else you you mentioned in there that
Speaker 4:So I got deposition by the way, Donald. I'm looking forward to a conversation, not a deposition.
Speaker 1:This is a deposition? No. I'm No. I'm just I'm very, we're fascinated by the behind the scenes stuff, and I gotta think you were as well once you first got in there and see how everything is working.
Speaker 2:And
Speaker 3:I think the most interesting thing about it is that most people who who leave a job in the NBA desperately want another job in the NBA.
Speaker 4:I turned down 2 jobs.
Speaker 2:I
Speaker 3:so that's the thing is he they're not gonna say shit because they're
Speaker 2:they're not gonna burn a bridge. You're like,
Speaker 3:I don't need this. So why not?
Speaker 4:I think for me, like, my my you know, I'm I'm I think I'm much more to me that this yeah. You're right. I think also, like, maybe the way I handled it post, Cato article was maybe not the best. If I looking back, I would have handled a little bit because I because honestly really didn't care about what was written in the article. Like, to me, it was nonsense.
Speaker 4:What I cared about was the organization's lack of response to correct the actual narrative
Speaker 2:of what happened.
Speaker 4:You know, keep in mind, everyone knew about the That kinda just went away.
Speaker 3:That kinda just went away?
Speaker 4:Still still pending as far as I'm concerned. They haven't as far as I understand it, that the lawsuit hasn't gone away. It hasn't been settled. But so understand that that is in the background. Everyone knows this.
Speaker 4:They can't talk about it because everyone's still trying to protect Jason, and rightfully so. And also there's a pending lawsuit, so they have to be very careful. But also remember, in my mind, there was something else that happened with the Mavericks, which was the Tony Ronzoni situation in the hotel room in Vegas, and they had an immediate PR response for that. Mark's idea of a PR response for me, which is what bothered me, and I told Mark this afterwards. Now we're since now we're, like, totally cool, but my my my annoyance was that Mark's PR response was to do, like, a the Streisand effect, which is to retweet retweet the article with the word bullshit.
Speaker 4:And it's like, okay. Now you've just given it, you know, 30, you know, 3 and a half more, however many followers you have on Twitter, more visibility. Not that it needed more visibility after Tim Cato went on his immediate horror tour of, podcasts over and over and over again. But, yeah. So that was like my issue is that.
Speaker 4:And people also don't know my personality. I think I'm this guy who's like difficult and he's really, I'm an easy going, you know, don't let most I don't what other people think of me doesn't really bother me. I don't really I care about the people I care about. So this wasn't really impacting my life negatively. It was just kind of like, oh, I thought you had my back.
Speaker 4:You know, I gave you 3 years of my time, and you paid me some amount of money. You know the money doesn't mean anything to me. You know, I did this because I believed in the vision. You sold me. And now where is you, you know, where are you backing me on this?
Speaker 4:And I think, Mark's just in a different stratosphere in terms of wealth and fame that I don't think he's ever really had anyone talk to him the way I talked to him in that regard. Like, where, like, you know, you know, stuff I said to him after when I was quitting was like, yo, bro. Like, I don't wanna be here anymore because these types of things are important to me. You know? And so but, yeah, to answer your initial question, which I don't remember what it was, but it was something along the lines of yeah.
Speaker 4:I didn't really care. I I got off all the off to other jobs. I would never work in the NBA again because at the end of the day, not being able to make a final decision really weighed on me a little bit. Like, if I'm doing all this work and I'm dependent on some guy who's like, I like this guy better. Why?
Speaker 4:Intangibles. That's not how I operate. So it was just a difficult situation. So, yeah, I I I maybe I shared more than I should have, but, you know, it's just kind of my nature in some ways.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't take a run a franchise? You're the GM? Absa
Speaker 4:have you seen what these people look like after 5 years of running an NBA franchise? It's like it's like becoming a president. You know, they got 2 phones to 1 ear.
Speaker 1:No. Absolutely. Do it your way. You don't have to do it the way they're doing it.
Speaker 4:You'd be but you still don't have the absolute I mean, what is what what is the goal here? You have your your goal is to give up your I don't know. People seem like my my life is pretty good. I don't need to be a slave to the NBA draft. It's a lot of work.
Speaker 4:And the guys who do it well really, really, really are willing to sacrifice a lot of of of well-being. And so for me, it was like, oh, I can kinda dip in and out. You know, I was people think I was around Dallas all the time, like, well, I was going to Mexico coming back with a tan. Like, that probably didn't endear me to some of the staff. I was always working,
Speaker 2:but
Speaker 4:I had the freedom to work wherever I wanted to work. So, no, I wouldn't. To be a GM you have to be there all the time. I wouldn't wanna do that. It just wasn't you know maybe at some point I thought, you know, it'd be interesting, but once I saw the reality of it, how the sausage was made, I was like, no.
Speaker 4:That's not for me.
Speaker 3:So the move then is just go buy a team in a Spanish soccer league.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Or an NBA team. I'm not rich enough. The NBA team's got got more and more expensive along the way. So, and I and I also, you know, I studied basketball for 20 years.
Speaker 4:Basketball got a little boring to me after, you know, basketball, my opinions can solve. You need a top 5 talent to win and you basically spread the court and shoot a lot of threes. The math is pretty, pretty simple. Soccer is a little more intricate and a little more exciting to me because of that.
Speaker 3:That's what I was gonna say is what's your background with soccer or analytics or strategy?
Speaker 4:Like anything, you collect enough data. There's a wealth of data available in in football. Soccer, we call it football so building models, trying to predict outcomes of games, trying to predict what a player's worth. You know, if you can give me the 11 players who are starting for each team, I can predict if I can predict the outcome better than the Vegas odds or here in the European sports book odds, and that tells me I'm onto something. It tells me I understand players.
Speaker 4:So that was kind of the impetus of it. During COVID, it was the first sport to start up again, so I became more interested in it then. We're already building models. I loved, loved, loved the idea of relegation and promotion. I don't know if you guys are familiar with this, but Sure.
Speaker 4:The Detroit Pistons would be in the fucking 4th division of of of football somewhere now instead of the top division. In the NBA, failure is rewarded with draft picks here. It's it's it's a death sentence for some clubs, so that's exciting. So, yeah, we just have, like, a different approach over here in terms of, like, we're a data driven organization. We try to lean into our our our, what we know, which is analytics and strategy and and modeling.
Speaker 4:We identified our coach that way, the new coach we hired. So that was kind of the impetus for it. Just something new. I like Europe. I spent most of the summers in Europe anyways.
Speaker 4:So even back then, we won't even during free agency, during the Mavericks 1 year, I was in Europe, you know, basically in Greece trying to help Mark out then. So that was kind of the impetus for him.
Speaker 3:Do the even in the 2nd division, I guess, like, do the players over there where do they have track do you have tracking data?
Speaker 4:Yeah. We don't have so we're in the 3rd, to be clear.
Speaker 3:Sorry.
Speaker 4:Hopefully, we'll be in the second. We're in 1st place right now. We're tied for 1st. So we came close last year within we lost the last game of the season, 10. We're actually 21.
Speaker 4:We were up one nothing at halftime. We have, in the league of 2, the 2nd division, there is tracking. So So there's full tracking provided by the league. In our league, we have Statsbomb does, like, tracking with, you know, human track data. And then there's something called skill corner, which uses the broadcast feed to provide data very similar to 2nd spectrum, although not quite as as as as effective because he uses the cameras from the broadcast.
Speaker 4:There are a lot there's a lot of data though. A lot of data. So
Speaker 3:So how were you received as far as, like, do you speak Spanish?
Speaker 4:I don't speak Spanish. I'm learning, but it's going slow. And I found that I really enjoy the way I communicate in English. So I until I get to a level where I can be nearly as as as, let's say, eloquent or efficient in my speech, I'm I'm avoiding speaking in Spanish, but I can understand what most people say, and I can string together some sentences, but I don't come across very intelligent
Speaker 2:when I try to speak Spanish.
Speaker 3:I only ask that because, obviously, we know the old trope, every sport in America when it comes to numbers and analytics, and we're gonna do things a little bit differently because of this, which almost always end up being correct. How how it's received by I don't know much about European soccer. I know analytics are a huge, huge part of it, but I don't know necessarily how the players react to it.
Speaker 4:Players are great. The difference between football players and NBA players is is pretty massive. I think, there's a real deferential culture here. And so we've never ever had a situation where we've explained to a player why, you know, the so this year to be clear, we have a I have a coach that I identified as like a top top level coach, convinced them to leave the top division in Holland to come down here and help us. And so I don't I had more impact on how the Mavericks play, basketball strategy wise and game plan wise than I do with a team I own because what I've realized is I trust this guy to do his job, and I let him do his job, and I don't fuck with him.
Speaker 4:I I I pick the I I try to sign all the players that I like with his input, but I let the coach have free rein. So but last year, it wasn't like that. Last year, we kinda thought we could coach some coaches up. We could hire a coach maybe who wasn't as good and give them the right analytics analytical information. We realized that didn't work because at the end of the day, these players are like wolves.
Speaker 4:So if you if if they can sense some weakness in you, and then you don't really believe in what you're saying, but you're kind of what the what the what the what the owner is saying, it can cause some issues. So we had a little bit of that last year, but not a lot. Players are great though. If you can identify something as simple as shoot less 3 shoot less too long twos, take more threes in soccer and explain to a player. There are some things like that.
Speaker 4:They've all been pretty well receptive to it. Like high crosses are a good example. They're pretty low efficient thing you do. So you wanna cross lower, you wanna cut back in versus crossing the ball high. So we had a couple of players who were crossing a lot.
Speaker 4:We kinda weaned that out of our of our approach. But yeah, it's been good.
Speaker 3:Seems like a lot of fun. Great.
Speaker 4:What's that?
Speaker 2:I said
Speaker 3:it seems like a lot of fun. Like, you've arrived at a point. It's like, this is what I wanted to do when I was a kid in every day.
Speaker 4:Real life football man. Real life football manager in some ways. Yeah. Kind of fun.
Speaker 3:Super cool. I love
Speaker 1:the whole like you said, the relegation, the draft pick thing. It's do you find it really weird that that European side we're we're a capitalist society and we hate, you know, every politically, it's like, oh, we hate socialism, which
Speaker 4:is what NBA is like the least capital.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That's what all all of our sports leagues are are socialism. Aren't they?
Speaker 4:Yeah. It's like a commie socialist thread. But it is really when you think about it, it's it's it's the revenue is shared fairly equally. Obviously, you have your individual TV contracts their team can sign. But BRI is kind of spread out between the players and the and and then, yeah, you can be as inept as you want running your team.
Speaker 4:Look at the way Donald Sterling ran his team for years. This is a joke. How is this rewarded? You know, it didn't matter because no matter how shitty he ran his team, he was also shitty. They're also shitty at drafting players.
Speaker 4:But, like, the Pistons, you know, the all the teams that were you know, I had to I had to, like, game plan. You know, the Mavs got in trouble last year for tanking. And really, they didn't get in trouble for tanking. They got in trouble for talking about tanking. Everyone was always tanking.
Speaker 4:They just weren't talking about it. You know, Henke got booted from the league for being honest about his approach. So it's kind of like, yeah, in some ways the American sports are kind of fraudulent in that regard because you you can't be too honest and everyone kinda like wink, wink, nudge, nudges, plays the game. Here it's like, you know, when I bought this team, there was like a big fear that if we got didn't get promoted, that the team would disappear because financially, it's not a moneymaker right now. It's it's losing money.
Speaker 4:But we have you know, my plan is to get into a higher league. And then the other part that's exciting is you can, invest in players. You can sign a player for a small amount and sell them for a higher amount. So that's like our business strategy in terms of to make the team competitive in the top league. So it's, you know, football has its downsides too.
Speaker 4:Like we're never gonna be able to compete with Real Madrid who can, you know, their, their max salary allow their salary cap is like around 400,000,000 let's say. Whereas competitors in their league are like somewhere around 40,000,000 just because Real Madrid's revenues are so high. And let's say like an also soon as revenues aren't as high to use an example. So or Almera. So there are some disadvantages to it as well, but it's it's it's more exciting to me.
Speaker 4:It's different. It's more exciting to me. It's maybe it's more and and just the the the the the gambling aspect of investing in a lower level team and bringing them up is a is a real fun story. There isn't anything like that in American sports.
Speaker 3:Do you think that the the international soccer community is gonna be pretty fired up to come to Dallas?
Speaker 4:For the World Cup
Speaker 3:stuff? Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, more slow probably than they were to go to Qatar or I mean, Qatar or Cutter, depending on how you wanna pronounce it. I mean Yeah.
Speaker 3:I guess that's a good point. I just everyone around here like, Jerry Jones and for some reason, like, Emmett Smith, We're at a press conference yesterday where they were certain they were getting the final, and then they did.
Speaker 4:New Jersey. Yeah. New Jersey.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, it was hilarious.
Speaker 4:But I just here in Spain, a lot of people were were excited to go to Dallas, and now they're finding out they're going to New Jersey. So
Speaker 3:I just don't I just can't imagine your average European citizen if we just did limited to Europe is good. They're gonna come to Dallas and be like, what is this? Like, what is this? I think
Speaker 4:I I think I've already said enough bad things about the city of Dallas, and it's not the city of Dallas. It's just I didn't enjoy my time there just because of of of where I chose to live. It was my own choice. But, you know, Dallas isn't so bad. I don't know.
Speaker 4:Yeah. I mean, it's different. I mean
Speaker 3:Stop it.
Speaker 4:No. It really wasn't. I mean, look, the the for me, like, I I, you know, I was choosing between, like, Monaco, Mexico, South of France, you know, Greece. Yeah. If you're throwing Dallas in that mix, it's not it's not holding up to
Speaker 3:No. It's it's never gonna get promoted. It can it can No. Not gonna be.
Speaker 4:You're comparing it to, like, Nebraska or something. I don't mean to offend the people in Nebraska. But if you were Sioux City or whatever, yeah, it's not a bad spot, You know?
Speaker 1:So I've never been over in, Europe. I'm going to France in about a about a month to, visit my daughter who is, studying there for this semester. She's in Paris. She's actually in her apartment is, like, 2 blocks from the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 4:That's a good around this mall. That's a good area.
Speaker 1:So Not at all. From what I understand, you are an expert at avoiding jet lag.
Speaker 4:I am an I don't know an expert. There's a c people type in the CIA hack for jet lag. That's what I I read this article on it, and I've been doing it. And it works really, really well. But, yeah, you basically starve yourself for 24 to 36 hours before your flight.
Speaker 4:Take your first meal at breakfast time of wherever you're arriving. So if you're on a plane I go back and forth a lot to Mexico or even, like, sometimes to the US from from Spain direct, with my doodle. And neither one of us have suffered from jet lag in the last 3 years by applying this approach. It works quite well. Starve yourself, take your first meal at breakfast time, and then immediately acclimate yourself to the the rhythm of the sun in the place you're staying at.
Speaker 4:So it helps if you're in near the sun. That definitely helps.
Speaker 1:Your doodle?
Speaker 4:My doodle. He's well, I don't know where he is. He's got sick last last night. 2 nights ago, he got sick. He had some kind of food poisoning or something.
Speaker 4:So he's he's not his usual doodle self today. He's very
Speaker 3:He's prominent on social media.
Speaker 1:And you're claiming that he you've also solved his, jet lag.
Speaker 4:Dogs don't get jet lag. I figured this out. We would when I go from Spain to last trip I took was from Spain to LA for a few days, and we flew out immediately after our Copa match. So we'll, you know, it's ideal if you can fly at 10 PM because then your dog because, you know, his dog's gotta be on this plane for 12 hours. So it's nice if you leave at night.
Speaker 4:I'm I'm I work it around his time. So we sleep on the plane. We get on the plane at 10. We sleep. We get arrive in America.
Speaker 4:It's also 10 PM. So it's like, okay. This is kinda weird. Now we go back to sleep, and then we wake up the next morning and we're good. Never have any jet lag.
Speaker 4:And, yeah, he's never had any jet lag, never had any accidents on the plane. He's he's a one of a kind, world traveler.
Speaker 1:That's nice.
Speaker 3:I wish I would've known that for the now that I'm probably done traveling internationally. It's the it's the worst move I was telling Dan yesterday is when you you you get to where you wanna go and you just go to sleep.
Speaker 4:No. So I had some people you probably heard that on my in the podcast I did with my friend, Liv and Igor. Like, they were on my boat at the time and, you know, the boat has, like, blackout. You're on you're in the middle of the ocean, so it's like, how could you have jet lag? Just get up at 8 in the morning, jump in the water.
Speaker 4:But, you know, they use the blackout blinds, which really make the room black. And so, yeah, they would sleep. They went and slept. They slept till 6 o'clock the next 6 PM the next day, and they're like, oh, we can't beat this jet lag. It's like, yeah.
Speaker 4:Because you're awake now when the sun is down. Like, you should be getting up when the sun comes up. So yeah.
Speaker 1:We're, and
Speaker 2:also the
Speaker 4:plane the plane stuff is interesting because you can't be eating on the plane. If you start eating on the plane when you first, like, sit down and start taking your meals, your your body has an internal clock based on your feeding schedule too. And that's probably why the doodle also doesn't suffer jet lag because he's he's not eating. He only really knows when he's eating.
Speaker 1:So So you wanna make yourself hungrier for that meal, like you said, at 8 AM or whatever.
Speaker 4:Correct. Yeah. That's your first window that you're eating. And so your your body attunes itself to that. And then it anticipates your next meal around around, around dinner time.
Speaker 4:So that that would be my recommendation.
Speaker 1:Where, where's your head at on crypto? Still all in?
Speaker 4:Very what's am I select?
Speaker 1:Still all in?
Speaker 4:I've been all in crypto for a long time. Yeah. I mean, I wish I could say that I, you know, was a little bit more aggressive selling some of the tops because I do believe in in in the cycles, the general cycle. But, yeah, I think this is about if you're not, if you're still negative crypto now, there's probably something wrong with you in my opinion. Like this is about as bullish an environment for crypto as there's ever been.
Speaker 4:You have all of the fraudulent people have been washed out. You have CEO of BlackRock on CNBC, pumping your bags, talking about the ETF. This is like the largest wealth management and financial company in the world. ETF being passed also means that the likelihood of it being banned, is near 0 because the lobbying situation has changed. So yeah, I think it's, it's, you know, not crypto because there's a lot of scams in crypto.
Speaker 4:Bitcoin isn't a scam because it's not crypto, it's its own coin that's decentralized and there's no authority on it. But, yeah, there's always gonna be scams just like any type of financial instrument. There's gonna be scams. But as long as you're in the right types of crypto, I think it's a pretty, pretty good time to start scaling in. I think there's all, there's always a risk with it.
Speaker 4:And I think the, if you can stomach the volatility, you can kind of do well. I got RC into crypto by the way,
Speaker 2:in the
Speaker 4:last 4 months.
Speaker 1:Really?
Speaker 4:And he was like, he he was like, I gotta he had to sell because he couldn't handle the swings. The volatility just got to him and he was checking the price too often, so he had to sell it all. But he made money. He got in, like, guy I told both him and Mark around I think it was just before MicroStrategy was doing its bond offering. We don't know how much you guys follow crypto, but it was a pretty big event where they had to file with the SEC to announce that they're gonna buy, like, a 1,000,000,000 or a 1,000,000,000 and a half dollars worth of crypto.
Speaker 4:So you could actually front run them. They weren't allowed to buy. They had to announce that they were gonna buy, then they had to buy on that date.
Speaker 2:So I
Speaker 4:was like, this is about as close to a sure thing as there ever is in life. You know, even if you only wanna sell afterwards, but they bought, and then then later on Tesla bought, and then it was the whole GameStop kind of people sitting around their house doing nothing with stimulus money. So, yeah, RC was, like, sweating the price of crypto, like, every day for a minute. And then and then he could he could here, you know, here's a guy who's who's, like, about as passionate and as hardworking as it gets, but also is like, you know, pretty strong, pretty high in some cases. Yeah.
Speaker 4:So like, I don't know if crypto was the right thing. For me, when the price goes down 30%, I'm just like, oh, okay. No big deal. And it was
Speaker 2:like I think it I I think it was negatively impacting his day to day.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, he got in. I got I got him into it for sure.
Speaker 1:I got a couple other things that just I just thought, here's a guy that might have an opinion on, cryogenics.
Speaker 4:I don't have an opinion on cryogenics.
Speaker 1:Okay. I thought maybe you would, for some reason.
Speaker 4:I don't mind talking. I I don't mind you ask me whatever you guys want.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm not trying to get away from you,
Speaker 4:but I don't have an opinion on cryogenic.
Speaker 1:Okay. Yeah. No. I'm just like I said, I'm just I'm efficient out here. From It just seemed like, in listening to you talk a lot, it just felt like, you're a guy who, is analyzing everything and, might just have No.
Speaker 4:No. I think people I think, I think, yeah. I think I know what
Speaker 2:I know and I know what I don't know and I don't know anything about cryogenics.
Speaker 3:It's good for you.
Speaker 2:I know that.
Speaker 4:I'm not looking to, you know, I feel like my life's had a pretty good run. I'd like to live as long as possible. The idea of living forever doesn't appeal to me. So I'm not I feel like I'll I'll accept it when it happens and, you know, as long as live, you know, maximize every moment of my life, but not try to I'm not trying to be like that Brian Johnson guy who's trying to, like, reverse age himself. Like, at some point, you have to just accept the fact that it's part of the it's part of the the natural, you know, natural rhythm of of life that it's gonna end at some point.
Speaker 4:So appreciate every moment while you have it.
Speaker 1:Now you sound like an old school coach who's telling me that, I mean, this is just the way it's done, and you can't
Speaker 2:change it. The one
Speaker 4:thing I don't ascribe to is coach speak. That was always my pet peeve in the NBA was coach speak. It's like this type of language, this codified language to explain things that be explained using words that, you know, sound good, but I'm not a coach speak guy.
Speaker 1:Like like
Speaker 4:In the real world, Dan.
Speaker 1:Did you read Moneyball?
Speaker 2:Did I read Moneyball?
Speaker 1:You're familiar with Moneyball. Right?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I know. Of course. No. I read Moneyball.
Speaker 4:I think yeah. I read Moneyball when first came out. I was a big fan of Michael Lewis till he wrote till he got paid to write a book about Sam Bankman Fried. That was a complete you know?
Speaker 3:That was a bad look. Yeah.
Speaker 4:It was yeah. A lot of people really, you know, got a bad look there. But I but yeah. I read Moneyball. I thought it was decent.
Speaker 4:I think it's interesting to I think a lot of the stuff that was written about wasn't necessarily super accurate just because it wasn't like it wasn't like they really solved baseball in that regard, but it was, you know, it was a it was a decent story for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I I I just grew up a baseball nerd, and I love learning that everything I've been thinking is wrong. And a lot of your history seems to be with running into people who don't love learning that. And it's just like when you I never thought about it before I heard you say we should try to, sometimes you target You look at other Okay. If you're making a trade in the NBA, I would think it's just about the players.
Speaker 1:But, sometimes, maybe look at the other team's GMs and who is looking to make a big splash because they gotta save their job?
Speaker 3:And agents.
Speaker 1:Or agents. Or who's a new owner? Like, the the the sun with KD.
Speaker 4:We'll talk about. Yeah. That that's definitely one that that that I think is is a is a, you know, in in poker, there's always like, we call it like whale hunting or like looking for fish. Yeah. So KYC, know your customer.
Speaker 4:So identifying the weak spot at the table, like there's that non money ball, but there's a movie rounders, or like if if you can't spot the weak weak player at the table, it's you. So that's that's kind of the philosophy. I I grew up my like people think I came from money or came from whatever. Like I grew up having to like gamble and not having to, but I chose to. And so for me, these types of things are always, like, solving these puzzles are always important to me for because it's fun, but also because it was financially rewarding.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, I think that's that's something maybe that could be fun about being a general manager in some way, but also can be, you know, a little bit difficult. But saving your job thing, I think is something that's really, really because you see it not just in basketball, but I think it's true amongst all sports. It's like, what can I do here to, you know, handcuff my franchise is maybe the result, but, hey, maybe I can just, you know, run it back and and create a splash? I didn't experience that as a owner of the team, but I definitely remember in the summertime, everyone was clamoring for us to sign a striker. And we had already signed one last winter, which was also the people almost revolted over when we made this move in the summer.
Speaker 4:We had a our leading goal scorer of the team at the time, our striker, we let go to our number one rival because we need a spot to sign another player who'd only scored 2 goals that year, but who our number said was, like, very, very good. So we signed this player, Jesus de Miguel, let go our leading goal scorer, our leading striker. Our fans were, like, in uproar. It was like a revolt. It'd be like trading not like trading Luca, but it'd be somewhat trading Luca, you know, for this tub, for this town.
Speaker 4:And so now fast forward a year later, the guy we traded for is is leading the league in goals by a big number. The guy we got rid of, he scored he's only scored 2 goals since. So, but my point is is that around the summertime everyone's clamoring for me to sign a striker. And, you know, it almost occurred to me at that point, like, okay, we already have a striker. It's this guy, Jesus de Miguel.
Speaker 4:But I almost signed one just to just to shut people up,
Speaker 2:you know.
Speaker 4:And and now imagine if I didn't own the team, if I was a general manager, I probably would've went out and signed one because I would've wanted everyone to see what a good job I was doing. It's also easier just to make the safe choice and and go along with consensus because when stuff doesn't go right you can kinda be like, well, you know, everyone everyone everyone else agreed with me. It wasn't an outside the box thing. Whereas for me, it's it's it's it's okay to make, you know, to take take risks and and and and make big gambles and and and hope they pay off. So
Speaker 1:So with your team, are you not the there's always this performative thing in sports where we have to act really pissed if you lose. And, you know, we we have to walk on eggshell. We used to take trips with the Dallas Stars and going on their team bus after a loss. You couldn't smile. You could you had to keep your head down.
Speaker 1:You couldn't make a peep, and it was it was it was always
Speaker 3:so 35% of their game.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It was a lot it's
Speaker 2:so illogical to me.
Speaker 4:I had a I had a situation like that my first year with the Mavericks. 1 of the assistants, on the bus or on the plane, excuse me, was like, you know, they're all reviewing film. You know, the last thing I wanna do after I after I we lose a game is to watch more film because I feel like I wanna have, like, a clear mind to to watch it. I don't wanna be upset. Not that I was upset.
Speaker 4:But anyways, I was, like, reading a book or something, and one of the coaches got upset with me. 1 of the assistants, not Rick, but one of the assistants got mad at me, and they were just like in front of the other coaches. More like, you know, it doesn't seem like these losses bother you. Like, you know, like, where is your you know, what the fuck? Like, this isn't a joke to us.
Speaker 4:Like, we were doing this because we need to. We're not here, you know, I think he was offended by, or maybe he didn't understand. It was like very, very early on in my my my, maybe my first road trip I ever took with the team. And my response was like, if I thought, you know, acting like a child because we lost would help us win games, then I'd start throwing shit. I don't see how it helps better decision.
Speaker 4:Did not endear me to the to some of the people on the team, I would say. That was, one of the moments. But I just like it's just true. Like, what is it how does it help you? How does it help me make I was like, what it's performative.
Speaker 4:Like you said, it's performative. Like, oh, man. Break something, throw a trash can across the room. Like, I don't that's not me. I don't I also don't really I've never been someone who really, expresses my emotions negatively like that because I just feel like it doesn't serve me,
Speaker 2:and also it's it's just not part of who
Speaker 1:I am.
Speaker 4:So And it it is robot.
Speaker 1:Is that part of how your your soccer team is too now? It's is that a change you
Speaker 4:where everyone here is very passionate. Like, here it's different. It's like one of the, you know, the people here have been amazing. Like, the our our our the reception I have as the president of the team is like top level. I mean, it's like I I I if I wanted to, I would I could sit there and take a 1,000 selfies and never leave because everyone wants to take my my photo with me or my dog or whatever.
Speaker 4:They love me
Speaker 2:for whatever reason because we're we're doing a good job and we're in first, but but here are
Speaker 4:the people are very passionate. So, and you know, the current coach we have now, he's not Spanish, he's he's Dutch, but he's also like a very passionate guy. Like, you know, he's so it's it's how whatever works for people is fine. I don't I don't, our my team doesn't know. My my team definitely shows emotion.
Speaker 4:That's just who they are. They're at, you know, it's it's part of the culture here too. We have a lot of Spanish people. Spanish people are are just a little bit more, I would say more geared towards that versus like maybe like an Icelandic person or a Nordic person might be a little more reserved. It's just part of it is cultural, I think, in some ways.
Speaker 4:And, yeah, the fans are I see this in the nicest possible way. They're bat shit. Like, they're they they live and brought like, die with this team. So it's it's awesome to see when when we're winning, and it's not so fun to see when we're losing. So hopefully we just don't lose and we're we're good to go.
Speaker 1:I got one more thing, and I know we've kept you for so long and, I can't thank you enough. But, like, when you whether it's with the Mavs or maybe in the old days of looking at poker forums, We got a little of this when we were in our recent lawsuit situation. And then a lot of people with their opinions, so this is what's happening or this is what's going to like, it was comical to read and our lawyers, our attorneys found this Reddit page and they they loved reading it because there are all these lawyers are idiots. They don't know what they're doing and they they they loved it. How about you, you know, when you know what's going on behind the scenes somewhere, did you do you look at the fan forums or what people are saying and Or even Twitter?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Twitter even.
Speaker 4:I'm on Twitter. I'm I'm a Twitter. Some people would would the kind description would be power user. The the not so kind description would be like, you know, addict in some ways. It's like my brain is wired now to get information fucking every in in 256 word bits or whatever.
Speaker 4:So, yeah, I read the stuff. I try not to, you know, I'll I'll say this. Like, I think, this isn't to, like, sound whatever, but I think like someone else would have could have really been damaged by that Kato piece and the stuff that was said about me because there was a lot, not just what not what Tim wrote because Tim was, Tim didn't really say anything super negative about me, although he did, but it wasn't like mean spirited. Yeah. He was just trying to write what he thought was the truth.
Speaker 4:But, yeah, I mean, it's hard not to read stuff and and and be impacted by it in some way. I think like someone else might have had like a really, really hard time. Like imagine I did need a job in the NBA, or I did need to earn a living somehow. Now my my, you know, a friend of mine who's who's who's like, your q score is so low right now. You gotta raise your q score because people don't think of you positively, you know.
Speaker 4:But it's kind of for me, it's more like kind of, you know, maybe there's a part of me that is maybe still somewhat kind of, I would say, you know, it's a negative aspect where I where I like to I don't know. I talk clapping back, but it's like giving more like, today, just before I came on the show, like, there's this idea of, like, oh my god. Bob drafted Josh Green instead of instead of whoever it was they pretended that we were gonna draft if it wasn't for me. But what they don't realize, and this is the God's honest truth, that if I wasn't around, you probably would have had Wendell Carter Junior instead of Luka Doncic. You know, Mark talked about this on all the Smoke podcast.
Speaker 4:Our analytics guys love Luka. Who's the analytics guy? There was no analytics department aside from one person and me. I can promise you that one person wasn't going out on a limb for Luca just because he didn't have that type of relationship with Mark, And it's also tough to go off in a limb when, you know, you need the job and you've, you know, like, I'm sure he did some, maybe like Luca, maybe didn't, I don't know. I all the time I was I was the only one, I only talked to Mark and I was pushing very, very heavily to make this deal.
Speaker 4:And Mark will say that the reason he did the deal was because I pushed really, really heavily. So, you know, correcting that narrative is is somewhat fun to me because these Luca fans are, like, out of their fucking mind because they think, a, I ruined the team, b, Luca hated me, and so I almost chased away Luca too. If they didn't get rid of me, Luca would have left. Like of this stuff that they believe because some, you know, some guy who lost his mind during COVID and was scared he was gonna lose his job decided he was willing to do whatever it took
Speaker 2:to keep it, even if
Speaker 4:that meant, you know, going attacking me personally and and crafting the story that wasn't true. Or, you know, allegedly outing someone who is, you know, gay and wanted to be in the closet still. Like just think about that for a second. You know, that that that's that's the one thing I will say. So so correcting that is important to me in some ways because I feel like it that does still bother me a little bit that people believe this story to be true because someone wrote it, and the state of journalism is is such that nobody will actually write a new article.
Speaker 4:They'll just take the old article, and well, the reason why he left the Mavs is because Luka Doncic didn't like him, blah, blah, blah. So the nice thing about Reddit, Twitter, having your own platform is you can, you can, you know, tell your own version of, of what happened. The bad thing is is that you can have people that should never
Speaker 2:have any interaction with you on a day to day basis are
Speaker 4:now impacting your life. Like, do I really care shirt, like, yo bro, who are you? Why are
Speaker 2:you talking to me?
Speaker 4:But here he's on my phone. The strip, like, yo, bro, who are you? Why are you talking to me? But here he's he's on my phone and he has access to me for like a minute and a half of my day. Sure he's a nice guy, but, you know, I don't need this guy in my life.
Speaker 4:So that's a weakness that I think, I definitely had a problem of when I was younger and I probably still it's probably still impacts me a little bit now. So but it's also fun. Like I think for me, I also enjoy interacting with with our football fans being somewhat, I don't wanna say controversial, but somewhat, you know, I'm trying to get more notoriety or attention to my soccer club. So part of that is my approach to Twitter is part of that. It's not like it's not completely contrived, but it's also somewhat contrived.
Speaker 4:Like, you know, I bring my dog around with me everywhere because, a, I love having my dog around, but, b, it's also fun to have, like, you know, to be a second division team and have your dog run on the pitch after the game is over. It's like, it's kinda fun. It made it made the news in Spain all over, so it got some got us some attention. So yeah. I it's, you know, it is what it is.
Speaker 4:Twitter is you guys are on Twitter. I mean, Jake, I wouldn't have even had contact with you if it wasn't for Twitter. So, you know, it opens up some doors and it also opens up your life to people that you probably shouldn't have access. You probably shouldn't allow inside your house or your your life. So
Speaker 3:It's very tough too, but you have to at least try to tailor your experience. Like, I have no problem blocking somebody. And used to, these guys would make fun me. They're like, oh, you soft. You're just gonna I'm like, no.
Speaker 3:I just don't. If there's negative energy coming my way that's not going to make me feel better, not going to make me a better professional, I'll just block you.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Or mute. Sometimes I use the mute buttons that don't even know that are getting to you.
Speaker 3:I kinda like them to know, but that's just that's more of a personal personal thing for me.
Speaker 4:You have to say really something something to me, like, really, really rude to get blocked mostly. And also, like, for me, I don't look at my mentions that often anymore. And I'm I'm kind of exclusively looking at the for you part versus the following, which is almost even more scary because now my for you feed is, like, completely tailored to this, like, thought bubble, this, like, bubble that I'm in and it's it's kinda pushing you in one direction. But it's also kind of interesting because giving me stuff that I would never, I've never even, I would never follow this guy. Now I'm seeing him and it's, oh, it's kind of interesting.
Speaker 4:And it's, it's pretty smart. It knows what you're paying attention to and what you're not paying attention to, and it's constantly feeding you more of that. So on the one hand, it's a little dangerous. On the other hand, it's also pretty brilliant in some ways.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite gambling movie?
Speaker 4:Favorite gambling movie? California Split is a good one. It's a classic. That's probably my favorite one, I would say. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I mean, yeah, California split. It's old one, but it's a good one. Rounders is great. I probably watch rounders like 10 to 15. So anytime rounders is on TV, I stop and watch it.
Speaker 3:Pay that man his money.
Speaker 4:So good. Yeah. So many. I mean, it's completely unrealistic. Like, okay.
Speaker 4:If you spot a guy's tell, then first thing to do is tell him about it so he gets angry. No. First thing to do is is to keep on exploiting that tell for as long as you possibly can, but whatever. They had to they had to wrap up the movie in
Speaker 2:an hour and a half. It's like you guys probably have to wrap up this movie at some point.
Speaker 1:Maybe that should have been my question. Most realistic gambling movie?
Speaker 4:I don't know there are any really realistic gambling movies. I would say, you know, Molly Molly's game is is the opposite of that, but the story behind it is is I think even more crazy than people realize. Like, you know, these so I
Speaker 3:don't know
Speaker 4:if you guys know what Molly's game, but she talks about this game, but like this is like literally the biggest poker game in the world. I I I was I played in it a few times, you know, with some of the most famous people in the world. Now that one is spun through the narrative that she was like this hero that which she wasn't, but that's that's an inner most realistic? I don't know. I have to think about that a little bit more.
Speaker 4:There's not really that many good gambling movies. I've thought about doing a gambling, docuseries or not a docuseries, but a series, with drama, like an HBO style show with a friend of mine who's a writer, and we've spent some time thinking about that. But maybe maybe when I have more time, I'll get into that because there are some interesting stories in gambling and there is a real, a real opportunity for, for that. There was like a cool HBO one called, it only lasted for a very short period of time because the horses sadly kept on dying. I forgot what it was called, but
Speaker 2:it was
Speaker 4:on HBO and it was about Hollywood Park. No. I'm being serious. Like, really, it was sad. Like, the horses It
Speaker 3:is sad. It's just Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think I think I think
Speaker 4:feel good.
Speaker 3:I think, horse racing should be eradicated. So it's just I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Didn't you predict it would be gone in 15 years?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And I think that, I only have about 5 years left on that. So I'll probably get out of my pocket.
Speaker 4:You know, the lobby is too big. I grew up around the horse racetrack. That was my first exposure to gambling. That's why I first started trying to, like, make money gambling with my dad. I was, like, 10 years old, but I wasn't you know, I was, like, sitting there with the math doing, like, the buyer formulas and everything.
Speaker 4:But then I came
Speaker 2:to find out that it's
Speaker 4:a game that can't really be beat. But, yeah, it's we owned horses at one point with some friends, or I've had some friends who own horses. The horses do know they're racing and they do wanna win. It is interesting, but they're also, you know, it's not safe and it's it's it's inhumane And, yeah, it probably should be banned. If if you really care about animals, it's hard to argue that it's a net positive for for that sort
Speaker 3:of thing. So that was somber note to end things on Oh,
Speaker 2:you're gonna say those. So they know
Speaker 1:they know they won.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Your claim is I got a friend who won a race horse and and I mean, it knew the day of the I mean, they're just like, do you guys have pets or anything?
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. Like it's amazing how smart these animals are. Like my dog knows when I'm taking a shower at 7 to 8 PM at night that like I'm going out somewhere. It's just not like a usual occurrence for me.
Speaker 4:So like the look on his face is like, oh. Like when I was, you know, dating for a while, I was like, oh, yeah. Interesting. Like a look he gives you, like a sad look. Right?
Speaker 4:He knows that you're leaving. He he he understands when I close my computer that it's time to go to you know, that that usually means I'm leaving to go somewhere else. So it's the sound of the computer closing. We'll wake him up and and and and wanna go somewhere. Like, they're really fucking smart.
Speaker 4:So, like, yeah, the horses know for sure. Like, this guy is like, you know, he sits on the pitch without a leash, will not piss on the field ever. He goes, like, way on the perimeter of the field because he recognizes that these are where the human beings are walking on. And so the field is grass. It's like the perfect spot to go.
Speaker 4:He'll actually go pee on rocks. So yeah. But he's abnormally smart up. Dog. But, yeah, he never runs on the pitch during practice until I until I give him the signal.
Speaker 4:And then when the players go for a water break, that's when he's allowed to run and do his laps. Then as soon as the water breaks over he comes back and sits at my side. Never yeah. The dog, the animals are smart. So yeah.
Speaker 4:The horse is definitely, Maybe not every horse knows. Maybe not, you know, glue stick number 6 knows, but the rest of
Speaker 2:the animals.
Speaker 3:That's a high. Yeah. That's a high. Man, we can't thank you enough. This has been super, super interesting, fun,
Speaker 2:informative and informative.
Speaker 4:Bad way, guys. I'll take one clip and spin it into a and they get I I know how you guys work, you know.
Speaker 3:You're gonna be getting viral
Speaker 4:at some point. So you're gonna find the one bad thing I said.
Speaker 3:No. We're just gonna clip the jet just the jet lag thing. The world needs to know.
Speaker 4:Shadow GM, you know, ride you know, go go nuts on Donnie Nelson for the 5th time.
Speaker 2:Blah blah blah.
Speaker 4:By the way, why don't you guys get Donnie on the pod? Let's get his side of the
Speaker 2:stuff.
Speaker 3:You know, he hasn't really done much. Yeah. It's weird. I thought because he used to be he would appear on our station, I don't know, once a month at least. But I just have I haven't heard but, I mean, I probably have some of that is the pending litigation stuff.
Speaker 4:Alright. I mean, to to be perfectly, like, to to not to, you know, having some empathy for him, like, here's a guy who put his entire heart and soul into the franchise for a long period of time. You know, I think very quickly along the way, he kinda saw me as as an enemy for whatever reason. His influence was slowly waning. Maybe he thinks he handled himself perfectly correctly versus me.
Speaker 4:Maybe he did. I don't know. But from my perspective, it is yeah. I do have a little bit of up up until I found out about the alleged Luton situation, I had a lot of like, you know, honestly, sadness for him because for me, it wasn't a competition It could have been a nice a nice working relationship, but it really wasn't, you know, explain about, it could have been a nice, a nice working relationship, but it really wasn't that unfortunately. It was more combative or adversarial.
Speaker 4:So, but when then, when I found out about the alleged, then my opinion to them changed a lot because now I'm like, oh, wow. This, you know, depending on which side of the story you believe, know, he goes from just being someone who's very cutthroat and, and, competitive to save his job to, you know, this is a, you know, depending on which side you believe. Yeah? So, yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know. At the end of the
Speaker 3:day, you ended up with a football team instead of a futsal team. So
Speaker 4:Yeah. What a win. Right? There you go. That's the way to end the pot.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You
Speaker 3:came out
Speaker 1:okay. Did did Kato ever call you for for comments or anything before he put
Speaker 2:that up?
Speaker 4:50 minutes before he was about to publish the article. I remember he he sent me a text message, asked me if I wanna comment on anything in my response. I never did any media, so I was always just like not interested. I had no idea what he was talking about, didn't think it was gonna be good for me, but didn't care either. I was in, I was on vacation at the time, so I was just like, and then the article came out and my phone blew up and I was just like, oh, this doesn't seem good.
Speaker 4:But it was also kinda funny at the same time, you know, because it was it was also right around the time Mark was dabbling in in that, you know, Mark released a blog post that day on, iron protocol crypto thing that ended up turning out to be a Ponzi scheme. And so it was like literally the same day. And I actually sent them a message like the the night before I was like, hey, you might wanna get out of this iron thing. It's, it's, you know, it's it's a Ponzi. And he's like, no, it's not a Ponzi.
Speaker 4:I'm just like, well, it wasn't created by a guy named Charles Ponzi, but, you know, Ponzi. So here's the math behind why it won't last. And then then the article came outside, you know, my my response to him was like, hey. Did you ever get out of iron? Because it was like a pretty busy day for everybody.
Speaker 4:And he didn't. So that was kind of maybe, you know, it's kinda funny.
Speaker 3:Were you
Speaker 1:were you surprised he, in the sale this year?
Speaker 4:Yeah. Very surprised. I in fact, I talked to him about it afterwards and I was just like, I never thought in a 1000000 years you would ever sell the club and, but you know, I'm sure he's explained his reasons for it. You know, I'm not gonna they make sense to me. There's all kinds of of and I had lots of people like, oh, is it because of this?
Speaker 4:Is it because of that? Is it because of that? Is it because of this? And I'm just like, I just think he just wanted to, you know, he understands what his strengths and weaknesses are and he understands where the league is going and, you know, he's also he's also been doing it for a long time and why not, you know. So it did, but it did surprise me, yeah.
Speaker 4:But I mean if he's able to still maintain control of the team, seems like a pretty good deal from him for him. However long that lasts.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Alright, man. Well, thanks so
Speaker 4:much. Yeah. Thank you, guys. Enjoy. I'll definitely follow along and see what you guys are up to.
Speaker 4:And, Yeah. Happy to help. Happy to provide some color. Hopefully, give you a little bit of entertainment. So
Speaker 1:Well, we have a, we have a new, favorite Spanish soccer team now.
Speaker 3:We do. I've I've just name of the team. I would. Cast Castillo. No?
Speaker 4:Alright. There you go.
Speaker 1:Alright. I'd literally do a CD Castillo.
Speaker 4:That just means Club de Partivo. It's like Club Castellon, basically. I mean,
Speaker 1:of course, I knew
Speaker 3:that. That's like when this weekend when they take on Sweta.
Speaker 4:There you go. Sweta
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 4:Which is, like, technically in almost in Africa, but it's technically a part of Spain.
Speaker 3:You don't say the you don't say the AD even though there are they are ADs.
Speaker 4:Big match. Yeah. We play them Big match. And then, well, 3rd to the last week of the season is a battle between current number 1 and well, they're basically tied with us. That'll be a big game.
Speaker 4:The winner of that likely gets promoted. So hopefully, it'll be us.
Speaker 3:How do they have a team in Ibiza?
Speaker 2:They were in the
Speaker 4:2nd division last year.
Speaker 2:They How do you
Speaker 3:ever get anything done?
Speaker 4:Yeah. I almost bought that team because I was like, I would rather live in the Ibiza Ibiza. You know, it's a nice area. Could be fun.
Speaker 3:Seems like you were primarily looking at clubs located near the water.
Speaker 4:Exactly. I didn't wanna buy a club that wasn't that wasn't accessible via boat, basically. So
Speaker 2:that was my I'm
Speaker 3:gonna buy a jersey. Harala Bose. I'll ship
Speaker 4:you guys some We'll ship you guys some stuff.
Speaker 1:Yes. Harala Bose. I will buy a jersey as well. That's our that's our main focus now. This this
Speaker 4:Let me fix the store first because the store I just had a meeting today. The store is a nightmare. So I don't I I I let me take care of that first, and then you can and then you can buy a Kicks. I think the US shipping is expensive. The navigation is not great.
Speaker 4:I only focused on the on the sports side for the 1st year, and now I'm trying to pay more attention to the business side because I feel like there's some stuff we can improve there.
Speaker 2:So we feel you.
Speaker 4:Give me give me some time.
Speaker 3:Yeah. We, we know how that goes. Alright, man. Well, maybe we do this again sometime.
Speaker 4:Good day, man.
Speaker 3:See you. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Thanks a lot. That's, the great Horalobos.
Speaker 3:I hit x.
Speaker 2:There you go.
Speaker 1:That was awesome. X now? Yeah. What a guy. Very interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. And I oddly enough, we talked to him for a long time, and I I probably could talk to him for more. And he seemed, very cool about it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, we we pitched him on 30 minutes, and he went to 1 15. So that's always
Speaker 1:the best for my guest. An hour 15? Yeah. Okay. No.
Speaker 1:That was great.
Speaker 2:I'm with you. I feel like we had another hour.
Speaker 1:Yeah. No. I I I feel like maybe we'll get them on again sometime. I actually will now follow a soccer team.
Speaker 3:Sure.
Speaker 1:Why not? Be the one.
Speaker 3:Why not? Hey, guys. I kinda have to pee. Okay. I don't know if they're prepared for that or not.
Speaker 1:Well, you know what that means.
Speaker 2:We finally got a team. Yeah. We're in Austin, Texas. It's about damn time and right on time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. The great game of soccer is coming to our city, but the great chance that we have right now is to take off and give off some to
Speaker 3:the rest of the world. You're listening to the game zone.
Speaker 5:They'll pop it. They'll pop it. Don't pop it.
Speaker 2:Nice and mundane.
Speaker 1:Little extra something extra. How you feeling? You lighter? Lighter on your feet? Okay.
Speaker 1:That's so full of, urine. You just said I gotta go.
Speaker 3:Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I was trying to
Speaker 1:I know that was in real world 5 minutes ago, but in Jake in this little magic world that we're in, it was, like, 30 seconds ago that you said that and you already forgot. Yeah. And I didn't forget Horelobah was on, and he was awesome. Or Horelobah's. You know what?
Speaker 1:Before Jake's assorted, NFL notes, what if we just do a little bit of viewer mail? Couple birthdays out of the way. Just kinda relax. We have fewer Hotmail. Hope this reaches you from, Hotmail's hot stepsister, MSN.
Speaker 3:MSN? That's a blast from the past.
Speaker 1:He says my dad is your fat doctor.
Speaker 3:Oh, no. I I know. I know. You're in trouble.
Speaker 1:He's really not that fat, but he's like, he's told me to lose weight and
Speaker 3:You give him the side eye.
Speaker 1:He could lose weight himself, but he's, now I feel like, oh my gosh. Anyway, he's 70 days. He says I have not I did not wake him up in that special way. Don't worry. He respects HIPAA.
Speaker 1:I've seen you at his office but was too nervous to approach an a list celebrity like yourself. Oh my god. PS, no puppet. And how about a late ice cream flavor edition, peach in the Middle East?
Speaker 3:Okay. That's pretty good. I like that. That's from AJ Shorn. I like that.
Speaker 1:So yeah, man. I I
Speaker 3:You're in trouble. I don't like You might need to
Speaker 1:I don't like when now I know somebody I'm talking about has family listening. I I like to just be
Speaker 3:How about this? Why don't you have, your parents, your wife, everyone you know, a lot of people you know is dads. I think that's better.
Speaker 2:How about this? Your in laws listen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Who That seems was not thrilled with me saying it would be weird to stay over there.
Speaker 3:We just gotta press on, boys.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And I've always thought, man, what if my radio career was where I grew up? And I thought, that'd be cool because then people would know I'm much better than them. I'm, you know, all these, a holes in high school who thought, that they were like, look at them now. Look at the star of the football team who is, working at the 711.
Speaker 1:Look at, how much better I am than you. But I guess what you guys say here is is valid. So
Speaker 3:I mean, I will tell you that I've been out before. It was actually at, my wife's reunion, like, 10 year reunion. And, predictably, I'm I'm a couple classes ahead of her or 3. There were a couple guys there that were, a couple ahead of me. So they're playing in the real young leagues now.
Speaker 3:And they were not I mean, they were just there. They didn't, you know, why would you show up? It was at a bar, but but why would you knowing that that's, like, the reunion for the girls that were 6, 7 years younger than you. I mean, I know why you would do it, but it looks weird. And they were real, real assholes to me.
Speaker 3:Probably brought a lot of it on myself.
Speaker 1:In high school?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Because they were like the they were the dudes who would do the the rub a taint on your face.
Speaker 1:But how were they when they saw you 10 years later?
Speaker 3:It was awesome. Dopes. Yeah. Oh my god. Jake.
Speaker 3:Now I really never came
Speaker 2:in. Yeah. But in Jake's mind, he was like, you know, if I ever see them in person again, I'm gonna tell him what's up. Tell them how much they hurt me. And then at this reunion, they're like, oh my god.
Speaker 3:I might have if I wasn't with my wife, but they cut it off at the past. Like, it never got to that point. Like, they were so nice. In my mind, I'm thinking, like, you remember when you guys were, like, making my life hell for an entire season? But there's also the downside, which is what Blake's talking about.
Speaker 3:You think I want my mom is gonna hear what I'm saying right now. Like, if I use the word, I'm
Speaker 2:not gonna do it.
Speaker 1:Why why does she listen? This isn't for her?
Speaker 3:I don't know.
Speaker 2:Just to check-in on her son?
Speaker 3:I I personally think that the dumb zone is for everyone, but if Dan is more of a,
Speaker 1:I'm just saying he's trying
Speaker 3:to he's trying to redline the podcast like a Alright. Post World War one neighborhood for black people.
Speaker 2:If your daughters did a podcast, you would listen. It wouldn't be for you.
Speaker 1:No. In fact, that's a bad bit I've wanted to bring up for a while. Jeff Pearlman on Twitter, number
Speaker 2:1 Is
Speaker 1:that the bad bit? You might already just say, okay, bad bit. Fantastic writer,
Speaker 3:bad bit.
Speaker 1:He he tweeted out, hey. Could you listen to my daughter's college radio show? Here's the link.
Speaker 3:Yeah. There's a difference between listen and blast out the link. Like, you could just listen and be like, oh.
Speaker 1:Yes. I've tuned in to my daughter's funny. I've tuned in to my daughter's radio show, and she didn't want me to, like, know when it was on, and she didn't tell me about it the 1st year as you know, because and I'm I'm all for that because, well, I don't you know, she want she's like, I don't want you to hear me figuring things out. Of course. You know?
Speaker 1:And I think that's a that would be a that's bad for them. It's kinda like now. I I've always talked about podcasting with you when you started it, because I think you and TC got good. But I always think it's a really weird thing because no one heard me doing college broadcasting. No one hurt barely anyone heard me when I was in Youngstown, Ohio.
Speaker 1:Yep. You know, you're you're getting your reps, but but now let's say it's someone who works at the ticket, like in a, weekend guy or something. And they follow in your footsteps and say, I'm gonna do a podcast now. Because just being on the ticket is your even a weekend guy, you're gonna have some higher level of notoriety Exposure.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Than anyone else would. You're gonna get a 1,000, you know, followers right away on Twitter. But now people are listening to the worst, and, of course, you're going to suck. Yep. You should.
Speaker 1:You you've gotta learn things. And do you wanna promote? Like, if you're on a weekend guy on the ticket who doesn't have any broadcast experience, do you wanna blast out? Hey. Tune in to my podcast.
Speaker 1:Because it's almost like the, the restaurant that's not ready for opening, and you say, hey. Come in. You might get one shot. And and if this thing sucks, I'm not going back to that restaurant.
Speaker 3:Yeah. TC makes fun of me because I think, I fish story, how many episodes we did that we did never publish, But I swear it was it was 10 or so, and then after that, I think I've probably said before it
Speaker 2:was more, and maybe it's even less
Speaker 3:than 10. But after that, when we started doing it regularly, nobody knew what it we didn't promote it at all. The only time people started listening to our podcast is when Bob and Dan became obsessed with the GBL fantasy draft, which is where Space is Super Gay and Barbra Streisand is a c. And you you guys played it on the air, and then we got some that was, like, we were way into it by that point. We weren't promoting it at no one heard it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like, it was terrible. Absolutely terrible.
Speaker 1:Blew up because of me?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like everything in my life, I owe it
Speaker 1:to you. But I I loved the when you guys broke down the GBL Fantasy drag.
Speaker 3:We go for, like
Speaker 2:Who wants this?
Speaker 3:We would go for 3 hours.
Speaker 1:Yeah. 3 hours on just on everybody's guess.
Speaker 3:Great. Like, we're looking at It was awesome. Cade Williams or something. I'm like, no. It's kinda a route 3 pick.
Speaker 1:Hey, Dan. My buddy, Jorge Martinez, has a birthday, Feb 6. Is that today?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Great.
Speaker 1:Crushed it. His leaders are tuba girl and France girl. Sorry. I didn't include a picture of my wife. She just squirted out a baby.
Speaker 1:Could Jake give a ruling on his name? Sure. Kai, k a I. Love it.
Speaker 3:Gotta be careful because I have a very close friend, a friend of this show with a son named Kai. I think it sounds like it sounds cool. Like, I feel like you need to surf.
Speaker 1:Is this based on the
Speaker 3:smash The guy you
Speaker 2:Smash Man?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Probably. But it just sounds like a very cool name. Like, I could've I would have not survived being named Kai.
Speaker 1:He says more video guy laughing in the background. We'll do what we can. From Dustin and Lucas, DF number 404.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 1:I do like your bit, Blake, that people can identify themselves, in that way now.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Neema. However, what
Speaker 1:if they're at number 55100, and then we went down a little bit to 5495, and then yeah. Do I don't know. Can we have more than one same number? That means we just have to keep adding. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We gotta stop going.
Speaker 2:No one can leave.
Speaker 1:He says, PSI Venmo the d z account $20 to make sure this would get read live to tape. Okay. Pizza Friday. That'll work. My name is Skip Lights, day 2, d f.
Speaker 1:As I write this, it is my birthday.
Speaker 2:He says some stuff about his in Google Outlook email.
Speaker 1:When I was out celebrating tonight, I met a dumb f in the wild in San Antonio. We talked about buying a remote to be able to smoke with Jake.
Speaker 2:Smoke a cigarette?
Speaker 3:Like a Yeah. Analog old school sick cigarette?
Speaker 1:Her name is Black Candace, I think, from the compound. Did we have somebody named Candace who you guys who see color named black Candace.
Speaker 3:If you're gonna ask me about what I remember from the late night overnight compound this year, Night 1, I can help you. Night 2, I got nothing.
Speaker 1:We thought 690 would be too little, so we'd like to ask other d f's to join together to get a South Texas remote. Picture attached. Anyway, wait. Skip Lights. That's his name.
Speaker 1:Couple other emails that are not birthdays. SportsFuhrer, I am your Singaporean listener.
Speaker 3:There you go.
Speaker 1:Geographically speaking, I must be the most isolated DZ'er in the world. I wanted to send a photo from Singapore's 911 911 Memorial. Way. But it turns out we don't have Yeah. That's from Jake Moon.
Speaker 1:You know the moon? Oh, here's, one titled, subject line bad bit. Hi, uncle Hotmail, cousin Gmail, and Blake. D two d f here. I guess I was too lazy or slow.
Speaker 1:Last week, my wife was undergoing a c section for the birth of our 3rd child. As I'm sitting in the operating room waiting for the procedure to begin, the surgeon was making small talk. Hate it. Just prior to beginning the surgery, he states in the proper tone, he said, as Dak Prescott says, here we go. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then he starts cutting.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Of course, now I will remember 4th round pick, Dak Prescott's cadence, every time I think of that morning. Should I advise him that he's permanently impacted my memories of my daughter's birth?
Speaker 3:Kids never getting out of the first round. I was trying to
Speaker 2:think of an interception joke. It's from Tom. Yeah. Couldn't come yet.
Speaker 3:Baby flies out from the c section and somebody else catches it. Yeah. Not not the doctor.
Speaker 1:And my final email is from Dan Volendorf. Oh, by the way, have you assembled your your funny comments yet?
Speaker 2:Not yet. They're still pouring in.
Speaker 1:What are you looking for? Funny comments on the Apple podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I don't wanna act like this is my idea, but someone recommended, like, a
Speaker 3:I mean, the I know another podcast that does it. So that's why I felt bad about it. But
Speaker 1:Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:I think we can still do it. They're they're in the trust room.
Speaker 2:Reviewing 5 star reviews.
Speaker 1:I know another podcast who had Haralabob on too, so we're allowed to do things that others have done. We'll do it better.
Speaker 2:You said it was, like, my thing or my bit.
Speaker 1:I actually believe oh, you brought it up the other day.
Speaker 3:I actually believe I don't
Speaker 1:want their credit for it.
Speaker 3:To my to my knowledge that there's only, one radio station in the history of the world that has read birthdays.
Speaker 1:You know what I've always said?
Speaker 3:Don't you smirk and look away and avoid the
Speaker 1:You know what I've always said? If you, if you steal from me, you've stolen twice.
Speaker 3:Twice. Yep. So we always
Speaker 1:You know why I said that? Because I stole
Speaker 2:it from
Speaker 1:Kit Kratick Okay.
Speaker 2:Who used to say that as well.
Speaker 1:It covers you. You're allowed to steal stuff. Sure. Anyway, this, subject line, it's Dan Volendorf. Give the people what they want.
Speaker 1:I'm a Gunnison, Colorado d z subby. I'm writing because I think a lot of your listeners feels like feel like we're getting cock teased a bit. Uh-oh. I know you're not going to go bag on the ticket. I assume the majority of your subscribers want to know what happened that led you to leaving.
Speaker 1:I know your contract was up, and you couldn't come to an agreement on a no one new one, etcetera, but I'm sure there was a serious effort made by others who work there to get you to stay. We'd like to hear about all of that. And if this has been worth it, who and what drove you to the decisions you made? What, if any, regrets you have? None.
Speaker 1:What the other expatriates of the ticket are saying, who has supported you, etcetera?
Speaker 3:Forthcoming.
Speaker 1:We will?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, you'll probably go a little harder than I will, but I definitely wanna I'm down to talk about it. Gotta give the people what they want, as Blake said. Spring break week. I think everyone's is about the same.
Speaker 3:Right? It's, like, March 11th, March 13th, something in there.
Speaker 1:March 11th is what we're targeting right now for a week of at
Speaker 3:least 3 I mean, vacation time. 4, maybe 3.
Speaker 1:What should I do for France? Do I I I wanna get as many days as I can, I guess? Should I leave, like, the Thursday night prior? Like, what would you do?
Speaker 2:Well, like, probably listen to her all about taking a night flight.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You got it. Well, you have to take a night flight. Oh, you have to? Pretty pretty much every European flight.
Speaker 3:I think everyone I've ever been on has been at night. Okay.
Speaker 1:And so try to sleep on the plane. Yeah. I guess yeah. If if you were, like, if you were going overseas now, like, what would
Speaker 3:you I mean because it
Speaker 1:feels like this shouldn't be a I need some buffer time. You don't go over there very often.
Speaker 3:So you could leave on you you're not gonna do the show the Friday before?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm I'm just saying, but
Speaker 3:maybe Friday
Speaker 1:night. Okay. Do the show. Leave that night.
Speaker 3:And then, I mean, you you you could fly home Saturday night, you're gonna be fucking whipped. I've been in those positions before and it's it's a weird feeling. And that's not even that long of a flight, but your body will be doing things. If you've never taken a you know, it's probably what? An 8 hour flight?
Speaker 3:It's not the well, even to Hawaii. Although, they break that up with LAX.
Speaker 1:Is that Hawaii. Is that worth it to only go for 7 days? I'm just thinking
Speaker 3:Most people don't.
Speaker 1:Should I try and make it 10? Should I try and extend it a little bit? And I could, you know, do the show there with you, couldn't I?
Speaker 3:You could. Let's see. Blue 7.
Speaker 1:Because they do have an AT and T some kind of a data thing. If you pay $10 a day, you can Yeah.
Speaker 2:You could do Monday, Tuesday there, and then fly back Tuesday night, have business Wednesday to rest.
Speaker 1:That's interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, I've, I'm it's a 9 hour flight, which is still not that bad.
Speaker 1:What's the longest flight you've been on?
Speaker 3:Hong Kong, which I think was, like, 14 hours, 15 hours.
Speaker 1:Let me check. I do remember the Hawaii one was quite long.
Speaker 3:16 hours to Hong Kong.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:From LAX. So you gotta fly LAX, and then that flight might have left it midnight.
Speaker 1:It's very I'm just interested in saying he's, like, he hasn't had jet lag in 10 years.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So
Speaker 1:And I wanna see if I can avoid it.
Speaker 3:I for the most part, people don't go to Europe for 6 days, even 7 days. I mean, it's expensive. You know? So, I I mean, usually, the way we would do it was like, expensive to be there
Speaker 1:or just the travel to get
Speaker 3:You're paying so much money that it's like, kinda wanna get the most out of this, like, on the flight. What we would usually do was, okay. So there was a week that I would be off, and the preceding week, we would fly out that Wednesday night. So I and sometimes I would even fly out, you know, Tuesday night, but I would, like, I wouldn't take 2 full weeks off. Like, I would work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, fly out that night, and then that gives us a a weekend built in on the front end, a full week, and then a day on the back end of Saturday to get home.
Speaker 3:And now you're there for, like, 10 days. That feels a little more worth it. Feels like
Speaker 1:you need that.
Speaker 3:Squeeze. Yeah.
Speaker 1:My wife yesterday was like, because I wanna do some other things. I wanna or where does she wanna go? She definitely she's Amsterdam was one of the places, and if she thought I was gonna argue about that.
Speaker 3:It's a special place.
Speaker 1:I think it was because oh, she said it was because of, we saw it on Atlanta, and it looked cool
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:When Erne was in Amsterdam.
Speaker 3:I think they've changed it up a little bit. Like, we're now in the district. You can't you you they don't have them, like, the curtains closed, I'm pretty sure. Like, the way that you do you remember
Speaker 1:The red light display? When they had, pet
Speaker 3:stores at the mall? Yeah. And you could just, like, see, like, behind they're, like, in a little compartment. It's glass. You're like, oh, that one's cute.
Speaker 3:When I went there, you would just you walk down the streets of it, and there's just women, like, in little, I don't know, pod type things. Naked? No. But, like, lingerie, showing off that, like, hey. This is what you're getting with me.
Speaker 3:And it was just like shopping. And you just walk by, and somebody would like For
Speaker 1:a hooker.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, when I when I hear the word hooker, I think of, like, the streets. You know? These are like
Speaker 1:A call girl.
Speaker 3:Escorts. I would these are, like, top top top looking women.
Speaker 1:What kinda what are we talking about monetarily?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I was not single. I was not I was with woman. So I honestly don't know what it is.
Speaker 2:If you would like to pay for Dan's s court at Venmo
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:On Venmo at the dumb zone, specify what the money is for, and we'll get Dan hooked up.
Speaker 3:That's probably the most stoned I've ever been in my life. We went, we went to this cafe in there, and it was actually the cafe that's featured in Ocean's 12. There's like a a pot scene in Amsterdam there, and there was a cat. It's like one of these old hippie type tea and coffee shops, but they sold pot. And you're just right there at the bar.
Speaker 3:It's a pop bar. I mean, they bring you over. There is an actual bar. They don't sell alcohol, but you get a tea. They roll it up for you, or they'll give you a a pipe or whatever.
Speaker 3:There's this cat when we walked in, and, I thought it was fake. And then I got, like, you know, we both were like, we're in Amsterdam. Whatever. And then I turned around, and I saw the cat moving after I was, like, maybe 40 minutes into space mode. And I'm like, oh.
Speaker 3:Like, I'm, like, hallucinating. You know? This is And then This is great stuff. I got so paranoid that I told like, I leaned over to my wife and I'm like, the guy next to me is planning to blow this place up. She's like, what?
Speaker 3:I'm like, we gotta go right now. It's a it's a great place, and I don't think it's a can't be far from Paris.
Speaker 1:Are you able to get stuff and, like, are they, searching your cavities on the way back, or what what do you
Speaker 3:I did I've never played the international game, so I will leave that
Speaker 1:What about within Europe, though?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think that's fine. I do remember
Speaker 1:because, like, from what I understand, these are very small countries. Yeah. Like, going to Arkansas would be going to a whole different country. Do you go through a customs every time you got to travel to
Speaker 3:We did it yeah, I think so.
Speaker 1:You do?
Speaker 3:I think so, if I recall correctly. And I also remember that when we left Amsterdam, I think we were headed to Germany, and I didn't bring anything with me. But I remember them being like, hey. Wake up. You know?
Speaker 1:Time to search everything?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Like, you left Amsterdam? Because there's no search when you get on the train.
Speaker 1:Okay. You went train? Mhmm. Because, I did see it's a 4 hour train to Amsterdam from from Paris and or pretty quick flight, I believe.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was Amsterdam. I can't remember, but
Speaker 3:the the trains are awesome, though, because you're European countryside, you know? Uh-huh. And it's cool. They have good food, to get a wine, whatever. They're comfortable.
Speaker 3:It's not like being on a, you you know, the subway or something. Anyways, we got wayside trim, but that's what we do here.
Speaker 1:That's right. Wanna switch up? It's time for a dumb zone interstitial. Gotta keep them separated. What's next?
Speaker 3:I don't know. I don't know if we have time to do football and news.
Speaker 2:I think I'm with you.
Speaker 3:We've we're going along. We did a lot of sports today. Okay.
Speaker 2:So what
Speaker 3:do you think? Here's Jay with the gun.
Speaker 1:So you seem to be saying
Speaker 3:I don't exactly know why Shaq has always had such interesting ties to the North Texas area. You know, when we were talking about last week, the, the deal where he, bought a family at, like, Grapevine Ford. He came in and bought a family, a new van or SUV or something, just paid cash. It just seems like he's around here a lot. Doesn't it?
Speaker 3:Yes. I don't I don't really know. Maybe he had a house here at some point, but I've never thought of him as living here. Well, in coordination with the Dallas County Sheriff's Office this Saturday, Licensed deputy Shaquille O'Neal will sponsor a gun buyback event.
Speaker 1:He's a licensed deputy in Dallas?
Speaker 3:I think he's just a licensed deputy in general somewhere. You don't remember that whole bit where he was
Speaker 1:a cop for Kind of.
Speaker 3:This was an,
Speaker 1:It feels like something you shouldn't be able to just give to anybody.
Speaker 3:It's it's it's kinda like a degree, like the honorary.
Speaker 1:Okay. I think so. That doesn't mean anything?
Speaker 3:Right. He can't pull you over. I don't think.
Speaker 1:Can't do a citizen's arrest?
Speaker 3:So owners who give handguns will receive a $100 gift card. Long gun owners will be given a $125 gift cards.
Speaker 2:That's it?
Speaker 3:Yeah. To what? To give your gun back.
Speaker 1:No. And where's the gift card?
Speaker 3:It doesn't say.
Speaker 2:To the gun store.
Speaker 3:To Knives R Us. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Why would people do that if you could make more money selling your gun?
Speaker 3:I think the the logic might be, and I've never really understood it, the logic might be that there are people that are just like, I don't really want this gun out there anymore. Like, I liked it for a long time, but now I'm at the point where I kinda just I don't wanna sell it. I want there to be less guns. And, I don't have the ability to melt it, but the buyback program does.
Speaker 1:Do you have a gun safe? Because you have a gun. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I do, and I don't.
Speaker 1:We're gonna have to take care of that.
Speaker 3:We might. It's just kind of an interesting thing because
Speaker 1:kids now, bro.
Speaker 3:Yeah. If I had a handgun, I would definitely lock it up.
Speaker 1:Oh, what is it? Like a musket? Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's right. Yeah. As an intruder, it there's I have to pack in the kung fu powder.
Speaker 1:No. I mean Oh, speaking of intruder, you know what we gotta talk about? What? That documentary.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Have you seen it all?
Speaker 3:I've almost done.
Speaker 1:What's it called? American Nightmare?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I described it poorly the other day. And I'll tell you what, everybody said it was like Gone Girl. It kind of is. But in Gone Girl, the girl actually was trying to, like, blackmail her husband.
Speaker 3:Like, he had cheated on her, and so she was gonna get back at him by kinda trying to frame him for murder, and then she disappears, and all this weird stuff happens. Like, that's not a that's what people kept saying. It's like Gone Girl. It's like Gone Girl.
Speaker 1:Well, the police department there said it.
Speaker 3:I know. But the what I'm saying is that
Speaker 1:And that was a huge, huge error. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, so it's not like Gone Girl?
Speaker 3:It's kind of like Gone Girl in that she disappears and comes back.
Speaker 4:Oh.
Speaker 3:But it's not like Gone Girl in that she didn't plan her own disappearance.
Speaker 1:So you haven't watched any?
Speaker 3:No. It's it's working.
Speaker 1:But that's what they they say allegedly.
Speaker 2:And that's how you guys sold it to me.
Speaker 3:That's how
Speaker 1:Dude, you gotta watch it. Seriously.
Speaker 3:Well It's insane.
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 3:It's also very depressed.
Speaker 2:Jillian Flynn novel of 2013, then I don't wanna read it or watch it. Oh my
Speaker 1:My god. Dude, it's really good. How about do something that we do?
Speaker 3:It's also terrifying.
Speaker 1:Anything that we do on the show. Like, one thing be a part of.
Speaker 2:I thought the whole bit was you don't watch it and you guys explain it to me and I can represent a part of the audience that hasn't seen it.
Speaker 3:He's got you. Damn it. What solid response.
Speaker 1:It really is. That's that's excellent, Blake.
Speaker 3:Well, it's
Speaker 2:I stole it from you.
Speaker 1:We've taught him too much.
Speaker 2:You've probably stolen it from someone else.
Speaker 1:No. That might be that might be an original.
Speaker 3:This Valentine's Day, the Fort Worth Zoo has a perfect option for people who think love stinks.
Speaker 1:The skunk something. You don't
Speaker 3:you would never guess this. You know how people used to, like, buy a star? Yes. Star registry? I think I've had somebody, like, give me one of those before as a gift.
Speaker 2:I'm like, what the fuck am I
Speaker 3:supposed to do? Okay. This Valentine's Day for $10, they will symbolically dedip dedicate a pound of zoo poo in the name of whoever you would like.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:Presumably your ex.
Speaker 1:Will they put it in a bag and
Speaker 3:Mail it to them?
Speaker 1:Put it on their doorstep and light it on fire?
Speaker 3:You ever do that?
Speaker 1:No. I didn't either. Always heard of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Shockingly, I have not done that.
Speaker 1:Yeah. To me, it was just like because I knew a guy who pooed in a kid's shoe and got in trouble for it.
Speaker 2:How old?
Speaker 1:Oh, either junior high school or high school.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But I was around when he was doing it, and I couldn't believe that like, I I just couldn't do that. I couldn't poo in a bag.
Speaker 3:I've done it in a cup.
Speaker 1:You pooed in a cup?
Speaker 3:Yeah. In a car.
Speaker 1:Oh, for the 2 girls thing?
Speaker 3:No. No. In a moving car. Cup?
Speaker 1:Why? Because they wouldn't stop?
Speaker 3:We were driving home from, New Orleans, and we were in, like, a monsoon. Like, you couldn't even see in front of you. And, we were in the kind of, like, there there was
Speaker 1:This guy has gone number 2 everywhere.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Planes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just just wait. He's gonna tell us he threw the cup at another car.
Speaker 3:No. But we did immediately just, like, throw it out.
Speaker 2:Somebody's gotta pick that up.
Speaker 1:Are we talking about a Fuzzy's cup or, like, a little,
Speaker 3:It was like a large drink from a fast food restaurant.
Speaker 1:Okay. That's pretty big.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But it was also paper, you know. I'm like I'm like the Fuzzy's cup which is plastic.
Speaker 1:Oh my god. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And he just chunks it outside.
Speaker 3:There's like 4 other dudes in the car. Jeez.
Speaker 1:Man, why are men disgusting?
Speaker 2:We just grow up thinking poop is funny.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I don't even really think I don't even really think it's funny. I just was like, I have to go. I have to go.
Speaker 1:And it's not like you could pull over and run
Speaker 3:out into the woods. No. Because it's it's not an option. There's a soon. Mhmm.
Speaker 3:RIP to country singer Toby Keith.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I saw that this morning.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I listened to some Toby Keith on the way over here.
Speaker 3:Did you? What do we got? He's got your favorite.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You love the booting your ass song.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's the booting your ass guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's, what is it? Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses. That was a popular one.
Speaker 3:I love this boy.
Speaker 1:I love this boy.
Speaker 3:Starz victory song back in the, like, early art era. Right? I recall. Yeah.
Speaker 1:He turned into low cup.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He turned into bit pop.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's a red solo cup guy?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Okay. I know that. Songs like that. But he How do
Speaker 5:you lock me now?
Speaker 2:I thought that was a pretty good one.
Speaker 5:Shoot a bit of cap.
Speaker 2:That's another good one. He's got he's got
Speaker 3:some hits.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He's got some hits.
Speaker 1:Were you crying when you're driving?
Speaker 3:No. No. Some hits and some hot opinions.
Speaker 2:Oh my yeah. What does that mean? He knew his audience, and he he catered to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Political? Yeah. He was really into, like, universal, basic income.
Speaker 2:I think he, big proponent of the of the green new deal too.
Speaker 3:Yes. I remember him signing off on that. It's actually probably not gonna pass now that now that he's passed.
Speaker 1:Stomach cancer, I read.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I didn't even know that was a thing.
Speaker 3:Pretty much anywhere can get cancer.
Speaker 1:Really? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Slow that down.
Speaker 1:I know your skin can,
Speaker 3:but Yeah. That's a wild one.
Speaker 1:It's not like your you
Speaker 3:get blood cancer.
Speaker 2:For real?
Speaker 3:I think so. Son of a bee. Blood cancer.
Speaker 1:How do you find that out?
Speaker 3:It's because it's your blood's moving. It's like, can't get a hold of this guy.
Speaker 1:No. But I'm just saying, how do you it's like if you find a lump, you're like, oh, okay. There's your cancer. But how do you, you know, doctor my perfectly normal sized doctor. He looks good.
Speaker 3:Mhmm. Sharubic at best.
Speaker 1:Has, has put his digit into my, backside Oh. To, because I guess
Speaker 3:out that window.
Speaker 1:You can feel something in there to to or at least he tells me that, you know, he can determine if there's there's some cancer growing around up there. I always wonder about that too.
Speaker 3:It's kind of a feel thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So he checks my you know, does that, and then what if the cancer starts growing the day after I leave his office? Or the colonoscopy. I've gotten a colonoscopy, and they say, well, you don't need another one for 5 years. What if cancer starts growing tomorrow?
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:Like, I feel like I should get one every 2 weeks or so.
Speaker 3:Just because you love it?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I bet you'd like that.
Speaker 1:What are you guys saying? Not gay man.
Speaker 3:Okay. We'll do one final one. I'll hold some of this audio for next time.
Speaker 2:No. I do it all now.
Speaker 1:No. Why? We're not doing a show tomorrow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. But we're doing one Thursday. Oh. It's kinda not really it doesn't really fit with the news anyways. But it's You know what, effet?
Speaker 3:I'm gonna play one thing for you real quick, and it's not even, it's not even the thing that I was originally gonna play, but I'll start, by telling you about Patrick Mahomes senior. Probably saw this in the news. He was pulled over Saturday night out in Tyler where they are from, and it was about 8 PM. Officers notice a car moving slower than the rest of traffic, runs the registration. His registration had been it expired since, September of 2022, I believe, which is K.
Speaker 3:To to be honest with you, though, like, I'm way behind. I'm this is the longest I've I've never gone more than a month, and I'm, like, 5 months out right now. It's just bad. I got my car inspected, but I haven't found a time where I can actually get down to the courthouse, You know?
Speaker 1:Could you mail it
Speaker 2:if you're on time?
Speaker 3:If you're on time. If you get even, like, a day past, you can't. So his registration's been out for almost 2 years. He had an open container, an open tall boy. It was tall boy Saturday for Patrick Mahomes senior.
Speaker 3:So he's 53 years old. Admittedly, admitted to drinking a few beers while watching a game at the bars, and they saw the open 16 ounce can, of the the Rocky Top. And he did a field sobriety test. He failed that. He had his, he had one DWI charge in South Dakota in 2008.
Speaker 3:He had a second one in 2018. He served 40 days in county jail on weekends.
Speaker 1:Man, I would think that's enough. Yeah. To scare you straight, like, okay.
Speaker 3:That's not how it works, though, man. It's it's you're an addict. So to scare you straight, basically, it's like you need to go get you to to straight enough to go get help?
Speaker 1:No. Straight enough to get Uber.
Speaker 3:Oh, I see what you're saying.
Speaker 1:But I do know also sometimes there's a Ego. Well or just a, boy, this will really get me in trouble with the wife.
Speaker 3:If you if
Speaker 1:Like, if I Yeah. That's true. She has to drive me to go get my car tomorrow morning.
Speaker 3:That's true.
Speaker 1:That's what I always wonder about with with the kids. Like, I you know, you try to say Call me. Yeah. Look. It's it's okay.
Speaker 1:Look. Don't call your mom. I know she'd get upset about, like, just, you know, I won't tell anyone if there anything ever happens. But, you know, the human nature, you would just be Yeah. Worried about that.
Speaker 1:I've always been an admirer of yours that you are Uber guy, man. You
Speaker 3:I've spent a lot of money.
Speaker 1:You kinda plan ahead Yeah. Sometimes, but you also will leave your car somewhere.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I've done it. And I would think many dozens and dozens of times. Yeah. I mean, if I didn't grow up in the Uber era, you know, I'm I'm sure I would have made some way more terrible decisions.
Speaker 3:Not to say I've made never made any on that front, but I would have made way more. I mean, dude, the weird thing is is, like, as everybody says, I can remember, like, being in the car with, like, for sure my grandfather who lived out in the country. It was people had beer in the car.
Speaker 2:Dude. It was just that's just what you did.
Speaker 1:I think every now and again on Twitter, there will be, like, a, thing that goes viral. Have you seen, like, it's a 1985 news clip from Texas. Maybe it's from Fort Worth where the old farmer is in his truck, and he's got a he's got a beer. And they were just saying, like, they were just trying to stop open container.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he's like, out of my dead hands, you know, like, I am an American. I'm gonna you know, they're gonna tell me I can't drive around with this?
Speaker 3:Yeah. So, you know It wasn't that long ago. No. It wasn't. As far as Mahomes' senior goes, you know, you've seen videos of him throughout the playoffs where he's, like, out the tailgate, shotgunning cold ones with fans.
Speaker 3:Like, definitely gets down.
Speaker 1:He does pretty hard for his age.
Speaker 3:Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. He's 53. He looks 65.
Speaker 1:He oh, okay. I thought he was I thought
Speaker 2:he was older than 50 3.
Speaker 3:He's not he's not really that old. Right. Like, I know a bunch of 50 early fifties guys who I mean, think about it this way. Pull up a picture of Patrick Mahomes, senior, and then understand that he's the same age as Corby.
Speaker 1:Like, another guy who parties pretty hard. He does, but he
Speaker 3:takes care of himself outside of that pretty well. So you gotta try to balance it out. Alright. There's your news.
Speaker 2:When he what what do you think he gets funneled?
Speaker 3:I you know, I'm fascinated by that sort of stuff. I'm So,
Speaker 1:like, if you made 50,000,000 a year, what do you send to Chappie?
Speaker 3:Well, I mean, I got a divvy it. I mean, I think his parents are divorced too, so similar situation, but I gotta divvy it up. I think you probably do this.
Speaker 1:Like, what's enough? You know?
Speaker 3:You let them each pick a house in a reasonable range. 1,000,000. 1a half 1000000. You buy cash. Although, I've we've since learned from Michael Irvin that's not the smartest move.
Speaker 3:I just don't wanna be dealing with it. Just pay off their houses, And then you come up with some sort of you figure out what you want your lifestyle to be, and then you kind of give them some sort of monthly stipend. Maybe it's it's not much. Like, you're still gonna have to work.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Who gets yeah.
Speaker 3:50,000,000 is not enough for you to be like, I'm gonna give each of my parents $10,000,000, you know, right away. It's or a year. However you wanna do it. That's
Speaker 2:yeah. That's not that's not
Speaker 3:gonna happen.
Speaker 1:And then then the then the question is, well, how close of a relation do I get to get Jake's monthly stipend? Like, because now you got you got parents. You got, a brother for sure. Okay. What about your favorite uncle?
Speaker 1:Is he gonna be like, oh, wait. You're leaving me out of this? Or I'll
Speaker 3:tell you what. You guys can come to a barbecue at my house once a year.
Speaker 1:You know, money does just cost. I'm glad I don't make 50,000,000 a year.
Speaker 3:No problems. All the trouble we'd have. There's your dues. Although, I am gonna play you guys a small piece of audio here because I'll forget it by Thursday.
Speaker 1:And subscribe. So this is outside of the news?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Is this the announcer getting mad at his crew?
Speaker 3:Just bring it up during the show meeting.
Speaker 2:I'd rather just hold it over your head for the next couple weeks.
Speaker 1:What is he talking about?
Speaker 3:He we've we've had a piece of audio, and we forgot to play it that day, and then something came up the next day. And now at the end of every show because he doesn't bring it up in the meeting as a producer would do to remind us, like, hey. We got this good audio of this announcer's college basketball guy.
Speaker 1:Are you officially our producer? I don't know. See, that's the thing. That we got a hiragalabob Mavs situation here where there's no defined roles.
Speaker 3:And, I mean, hell, I booked a guest today.
Speaker 2:You did?
Speaker 3:I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:I think,
Speaker 3:Just bring it up when we're talking about when someone says, what do we have today?
Speaker 1:Which we Generally do before
Speaker 2:the show. Way more fun.
Speaker 3:And you think of something we have. No. I thought this commercial, was hilarious, and it might have been my state, on the trip, but I think brands in general are way more okay being, like, sexy now, which has always been the case in Europe or something like that. But this is a KFC commercial for their new, fries.
Speaker 4:You're looking to smash
Speaker 2:That bowl of fries, potatoes, cheese, and bacon.
Speaker 3:Okay. I'm gonna play that again for you. Yes. You wouldn't have. Are you looking to smash?
Speaker 2:Yeah. This is
Speaker 3:how the kids talk about doing it. Yeah. Yeah. They leave just enough hang time in there
Speaker 1:to think about, dude.
Speaker 4:Yeah. You're looking to smash
Speaker 2:that bowl of fries, potatoes, cheese, and bacon. The new smashed potato bowl is just 349. Only a KFC.
Speaker 3:They got, like, kinda porny dance music playing there. Like, I I kinda couldn't believe that they got away with that. Yeah. Look at it. Smash.
Speaker 1:And then once he describes what you will be smashing, now you're thinking of a an American pie situation where you're actually having sex with this.
Speaker 3:My junk in this thing of fries? Yeah. And the That seems way worse than a pie.
Speaker 1:You know, there's always bacon. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Just let it go. Gotta make it won the war against McDowell.
Speaker 1:We can't have don't have sex with every piece of bacon. Can I just have sex with the potato?
Speaker 3:Ugh. Gotta add the bacon? You guys want a little sour cream in there, you know?
Speaker 1:Well, you you put it in there. The dumb zone presents Today in History.
Speaker 3:This is the longest podcast of my life.
Speaker 2:How long we've been going? About 2:15. Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:Want me to, hustle through this then?
Speaker 2:Do whatever you want.
Speaker 1:Oh, can I say whatever I want? So it's Tuesday, February 6th. On this day in 1935, Monopoly goes on sale for the first time, the board game. Were you guys Monopoly guys?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Big time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I used to play it on my Sega Genesis.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Just because it was a so you never played it as a board game?
Speaker 2:I did too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:This was a big thing, you know, family get togethers. Oh, we'll pull out the you know? Yeah. Not until Cousins come over.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Much older. But, yeah, it was fun.
Speaker 1:On the same day in 2013, Hasbro announced that monopoly fans voted online to add a token to the board game, which would replace the iron. Iron. The iron.
Speaker 2:Don't make us guess what it is.
Speaker 1:What won the oh, what why do you think I'm doing that?
Speaker 3:What were the originals? You had the
Speaker 1:guy with the monocle. Actually, doesn't have a monocle. Oh, the rich guy, you had
Speaker 2:the Yep. He wasn't a token.
Speaker 1:Oh, I thought you had a rich guy that was a token.
Speaker 2:He had a car. He had a top hat. He had a wheelbarrow. Have a monocle, but originally, he did. He had a did I already say a dog?
Speaker 2:He had a cat.
Speaker 3:Did the Iron. Did it replace the thimble? Who?
Speaker 1:No. The iron was replaced by By thimble? No. It was, replaced by a cat. So there wasn't originally a cat.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:A ragdoll cat. That's pretty cool. You gonna bring the ragdoll cat over one day?
Speaker 3:I'd love to, but I don't know how Kip and Bodhi would feel about that. Isn't that what it has to be a video day. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to, but I think there could be potential chaos.
Speaker 1:Let's see. Oh, on this
Speaker 2:sign a
Speaker 3:if you're willing to sign a waiver.
Speaker 1:On this day in 1987, president Reagan became the oldest US president in history as he did every year on this day. Mhmm. But I think this was his last day, doing that. 76 years old. The previous high was Eisenhower at the age of 70.
Speaker 1:And now where do we at? 80 and Biden's 80?
Speaker 3:I thought he was.
Speaker 2:Okay. I don't know. Why are you yelling at me?
Speaker 3:It's so funny. Even though, like, the eighties were 40 years ago, it's so funny to me to imagine that we had a president, like, in the late eighties, dealing with, like, the AIDS crisis who grew up when people still rode horses at some parts of the country for transportation. Like, I remember when when I met my great grandmother, I could not comprehend how old she was. Like, she was born in, like, either the late 1800 or 19 zeros. 19 odds.
Speaker 3:I'm like, oh, god. It's just they were building the railroad when you were born, And now you're here. This must be weird for you.
Speaker 1:Well, and it's technologically exponentially, you know, gets more advanced. Yeah. Like, imagine what you, you know, old Jake is going to be looking at.
Speaker 3:I I can't.
Speaker 1:Your grand grandkids will have zero idea how to process that. On this day in 1998, Mary Kay Letorno was sentenced to seven and a half years. She had violated probation by, going to see her 14 year old father of her baby. She was 36. He was 14.
Speaker 3:So she was out on probation with the condition that she not go see
Speaker 1:And I think they caught him. Did they catch him, like, in a parking lot or something?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Pretty sure. Doing it. Recently passed. Yes.
Speaker 1:On this day in 2012, Linsanity started. Jeremy Lin scored a career high 28 points in his first ever start when the Knicks beat the Jazz. It's a fun time. It really was.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Do you remember when that the reporter from ESPN got in trouble?
Speaker 1:Probably fired. Right? Like You
Speaker 3:think he was fired?
Speaker 1:It was an article that said it was about the Knicks or somebody's the chink in the armor.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I do think And I don't You read the article, it was kind of just an honest oversight. Yeah. But, yeah.
Speaker 1:And on this day in 2018, SpaceX had a new rocket blast off. Is that Elon's company?
Speaker 2:Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So it was on a route that would take it to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the goal was that it was going to it had a red sports car on board, and it was going to like, that there's now a red sports car. Well, I don't know if it got there yet. I don't know how fast you get to
Speaker 2:The asteroid belt?
Speaker 1:The asteroid belt. But they're they're going to have a red sports car flying around. So, like, in the future, somebody will sign you know, somebody will
Speaker 3:What a giant waste of
Speaker 1:time. This? Birthdays today, Chris Humphreys is 39?
Speaker 3:Kardashian.
Speaker 1:Former Dallas star Fabian Brunston, Brunstrom is 39.
Speaker 3:We're always tell talking him up to me. This guy's gonna be the next one.
Speaker 1:I thought he was. He had 3 goals in his first game, and he finished with 19 career goals. How about that? Oddly enough, the singer Fabian is 81. Isn't that weird?
Speaker 1:Do you think he was named after? Do you think
Speaker 2:I mean, probably. Blake's done. Honestly.
Speaker 1:Rick Astley is 58. Is that Rick Roll?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:K. And then, Born on This Day, we have, Babe Ruth.
Speaker 2:Was Bill O'Reilly really Rick Rolled, or am I falling for something? Was this recent? His explosion or whatever. What do you mean to play us out? That whole thing.
Speaker 3:No. No. You
Speaker 2:That was just confusion over the teleprompter?
Speaker 3:Yeah. With Sting. Here's Sting to play us out. Okay. But I did I do think I saw a very, very well done Rick Roll recently at, like, a public thing.
Speaker 3:Like, where people waited around to see something and then but I don't have any more details on that. Dan, back to you. I'm hoping that's what this stupid asteroid does. Everyone looks up in the sky and someone's just projected a global Rick Roll.
Speaker 1:Born on this day, we have Babe Ruth, we have Eva Braun, and, Reagan, of course. And let's give you Rip Torn.
Speaker 3:Oh, Jackass
Speaker 2:Dodgeball.
Speaker 1:Jackass?
Speaker 3:Isn't he? Isn't he out on, like, the boat?
Speaker 1:I don't know. The, Jackass 1?
Speaker 3:Let's see. Yeah. The first one. Hey. Don't challenge me on Jack.
Speaker 4:No. I
Speaker 1:should do this. And that was today in history. History.
Speaker 3:He, like, fires a gun at the end of the movie, and somebody jumps off something. It's wacky.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I don't remember that. Blake?
Speaker 2:What should my title be?
Speaker 1:That's for the fans to decide.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Well, that'll go well.
Speaker 4:Adios, mofo.