Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh dissect the NBA's mob-linked betting scandal, detailing how Jante Porter's insider trading triggered 34 arrests while Chauncey Billups and Terry Rozier faced allegations over rigged poker games and injury leaks. The hosts debate the shift to legal prop bets, Luka Doncic's chaotic trade to the Lakers, and Kawhi Leonard's uncle's suspicious Aspiration deal. Ultimately, they argue that without stricter regulations on data manipulation and cap circumvention, the league risks further corruption despite its efforts to modernize gambling oversight. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Mob Infiltrating The NBA00:14:53
Hello, everybody, and welcome to Flagrant.
Today, we're joined by the leak legend.
Okay, more scoops than a basket robin.
Jobs is in the building.
Let's get it.
Let's get it.
Look, brother, thank you so much for being here.
We're excited.
Now, tell us how the mob is infiltrating the NBA.
I don't want to go there yet.
All right, too soon, too soon, too soon.
No, no, but like I more just want to understand like it's an insane story.
Yeah, like, can you at least break down like what people are saying, what the idea is?
Obviously, I've done some research too, whatever, but like I'm curious, what is the allegation?
So, let's go back 2024.
Jante Porter.
Yes, two-way contract on the Toronto Raptors.
Yes, he essentially gets charged.
First, he gets on investigation.
Then he gets banned.
Yeah.
And then he gets formally charged with essentially gambling.
But, you know, it's different names in the FBI world.
It's like wire fraud, laundering.
It's gambling.
It's like saving points.
Yeah, exactly.
It's that.
But basically, there was a group of like a handful of people, essentially.
It's a network of people with him.
They were basically getting information whether he was going to sub himself out.
So then they just go all in on the unders and they're putting like hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Like you look back on it and you're like, if the sports books or people saw like three, four people are going like hundreds of thousands of dollars in.
Doesn't it make it so obvious, but these people did it?
Yeah.
Obviously, once it happened, the sports books, they pick it up like they flag it immediately.
They flag it immediately.
And the league flags it.
So the moment that happens, the league basically, at the time, I'll never forget it.
They listed him out as personal reasons.
And at the time, everyone started to hear it was because he's being investigated for gambling, essentially, on his games or giving insider information.
And that was a first of its kind.
That had never happened before.
Those same people there, they get charged everything with the FBI, with the feds, Eastern Speaker.
Those are the mob guys, you're saying.
No, these are the books.
These are the betters.
Oh.
These are the betters.
And are they his buddies or are they?
Because I thought at that time he was kind of like...
He was texting with them.
There were threads on it.
I think it was like Discord channels.
They did it in a way that it ended up getting out there and people would see the messages.
And it's like, you could have done that smarter if you're going to do it.
But basically, it's a group of these four or five people.
And once they get charged, what happens when these people get charged by the feds?
Someone snitches.
Eastern District of New York.
So those four or five people lead to, after a year and a half later, last week, 34 new arrests.
Wow.
But it's all from that origin.
Obius, they start snitching on other people involved.
I'm not saying the S-word.
I'm saying you're cooperating.
See, the last week I'm doing TV, I'm just like, you know, the feds are waiting to see who these 34 people are going to cooperate on.
What are they going to cooperate with?
So off of those handful of people, you multiply it by six, you end up with what we got last week, which is 30 plus.
But that also includes what we saw with the poker, the illegal poker scandal.
So it's two different scandals right now.
And those people are not connected, the poker people and the gambling people?
There's three or four people that are connected with both.
They're involved on both things.
And that's why the FBI is going is they're like a whole Rico.
Including Damon Jones, which we'll get there.
So basically, there's two separate cases.
Assistant coach of the Lakers for anybody.
Yeah, Damon Jones, former NBA player.
Yes.
He made a LeBron bad.
He made a LeBron famously.
I mean, they played several years together in Cleveland.
That was the most time he'd spent on one team.
Other than that, he was a journeyman player, but he spent a lot of time in Cleveland.
He was really close to LeBron with Shaquille O'Neal.
The list goes on and on and on.
And then he was a coach in Cleveland, unofficially on the Lakers 22, 2023.
Filed bankruptcy a few times.
A few times.
Yeah, he's sent a couple text messages.
Essentially, he's been living in Vegas for the last several years.
As someone who doesn't gamble would do.
Doesn't gamble, doesn't gamble at all.
The good foods.
Good foods.
The ARIA, you know, the wind go back and forth.
So basically, there's two different scandals right now.
So one is this illegal poker rigging scandal that includes Damon Jones, that includes Chauncey Billips, but it also is being led and fronted by mafia, mafia members, and mob members.
And that is the Italian mob.
I think what Kash Patel Kash Patel said in his press conference was essentially like four of the five big Italian, you know, mob families, mafia families are involved.
I assume Italian are involved in it.
Yeah, it's so racist.
It's so racist.
And so that is the backdrop.
So those individuals are basically Damon Jones, Chauncey Bills, so the face cards is what they called it.
So they're the celebrities that are being essentially thrown and flaunted to the fish is what they called it.
The people that are supposed to go there and then lose their money because they're being played because there's these x-rays.
There's these different sunglasses.
So sunglasses where you can see the cards.
That's sick, by the way.
That's insane.
Clever.
So now that we've like that's one part of the scandal.
We're just wetting everybody's feet right now.
We're not even at the Terry Rosier though.
But yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're just wetting beaks.
We're just wetting beaks right now because I want people to understand who you are and why you have perspective on all this stuff.
Okay.
So you are the top insider in the NBA right now, which means that you have access to probably the most information that nobody else has access to.
You get paid the big bucks.
Okay.
The big bullshit.
Box Wojabada.
Retired Woj.
Yeah, you had to have to put him off.
And he had a little salty ass message when he retired.
Did you see that?
No, I didn't see that.
I hold up for him.
I hold up.
I hope you're not sure what to do.
I'm a career I had or something like that.
We worked together for two plus years.
Nothing but respect.
He gave you the Trump.
I wish him well.
I hope I can have the career he had.
I like his nice.
Two plus years we worked together.
We're together at Yahoo Sports.
We went from talking every five minutes to competitors.
So every, you know, that's competition, baby.
That's how I view it.
That's what happened in competition.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
But you are, and I think a lot, I don't know if people know this, but like you guys are the high, the insiders are the highest paid people in entertainment, maybe outside of like a Stephen A. Smith or something like that.
But what you have is incredibly valuable.
And the networks understand that.
So these relationships you have are incredibly valuable.
So even talking about something like this, probably terrifying for a guy like you.
For sure, but it's like, I just stick to the facts.
As long as I stick to the facts and I stick to like every side, every side of the equation is being accounted for.
I mean, that's my job.
That's how I go to sleep at night and not feel like I handle things.
The worst is when you feel like you handle things the wrong way or didn't show someone's side or you treated someone unfairly.
Because that's not the job.
The job is there's a lot of hard conversations I have every day.
I mean, half the job is just deciding when is the time to report something.
Am I, have I, you know, reached out to as many people as I can on this?
Do I have enough sources on this?
Right.
That's like literally all the job is.
Like right now, I'm sitting on four or five different things.
I'm just deciding when is the right time.
Drop that.
Drop that.
Give us something right time.
Light this episode up right now.
Give us one.
I actually dropped something today earlier before I got here.
The NBA pulling Chauncey Bills and Terry Rozier's salaries.
Terry Rozier is making $26.6 million.
Chauncey Bills is making $7 million this season.
$33 million being pulled, frozen.
They're not going to see the money.
The only way Terry Rozier sees the money is if he's innocent after a year of this or two years or three years, however long this goes, Chauncey Billips, if this goes the full year, he's not going to see any of his money.
And the investigation is going to go a while.
It's going to go a while.
And it's going to be serious.
That's why he showed up in the clutch hoodie.
I would be surprised if that's if that's because you think about it.
You're getting picked up at six in the morning.
Right?
You've got to have on your clutch more than six in the morning.
That's why the first thing you grab.
Yeah.
He's walking.
That's what I would grab.
That's what I would grab on Chauncey.
I ain't going down alone, Brock.
Rich.
I ain't going down alone.
I know where the bodies are buried.
Or he knows who to call.
Or he knows a nice hoodie when he sees it.
It's a great hoodie.
They make it a great question.
High quality.
I do have your stuff.
Not yet.
I'm not in trouble.
I'm not involved in the gambling ring.
I hope not.
I think there's an interesting thing, though, about what has happened with gambling that has made this more possible for players.
Like, David Stern, I think, never wanted gambling involved in the NBA, as far as my understanding.
Initially, that was his taking that once Adam Silver started, you know, I think speaking about how can we regulate it, legalized gambling is good for the game.
And then now the NBA, I think they've been at the forefront of this as far as partnering with legalized gambling.
But let's say someone has partnerships.
No, no, no.
I'm not crazy.
I'm not critical.
I think that the reason why, and there is like, you know, some wisdom that would say like not being associated with the gambling creates a little bit of separation from things like this happening.
Well, J.B. Bickerstaff, the pistons coach, he said not all money is good money.
So there is that school.
So some of these people agree.
Now, the other argument is people are going to do it anyway.
So like they're either going to do it with some guy that's wearing a leather jacket in the back of an alley or they're going to do it online, some professional thing, whatever.
The point that I'm trying to make is the game has changed in a way, the game of gambling, in that you can do all these like prop bets.
Those are the killers.
And those are the killers.
Because before, you had to actively throw a game.
You had to make sure your team lost.
Now you just got to make sure you get less than eight rebounds.
And it's easy to get less than eight rebounds or less than six assists when you just sub yourself out because your toe hurts.
So you get your little four assists.
Your team might be up by 10.
You go, okay, my team's not going to lose.
I'm not going to have negatively impact my teammates.
And I know that I haven't gotten, I'm not going to cover the spread.
And then my boys or the mafia, whoever it is, can make a bunch of money and nobody gets hurt.
At least imagine that.
Under on points, I just pass.
It's like the most charitable way to do it.
Well, I'm getting you the open button.
But what I would say is that certain people are like paid to score.
So you really need to remove yourself from the game in order to not hit those props.
But would that be a fair description?
100%.
But that's why you think about the Terry Rozier situation in 2023.
So we already talked about Chauncey Billips.
The FBI alleges that he knowingly participated in rigging illegal mafia-led poker games.
That's one situation.
The other situation is Terry Rozier.
That started in 2023.
Same characters as the Jante Porter situation in 2024.
That allegation is that he told his friend, a guy named De Niro, which means money, right?
Yeah, yeah, he does.
I failed out of Spanish.
I think senior year.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Italian mom.
So De Niro.
White people.
De Niro over here, he, I guess, as the allegation goes, he gets the information from Terry Rozier that, hey, like, you know, the Charlotte Hornets at this point in the season, March, I think it was March 23, 2023.
We all know where the Charlotte Hornets are at at that point of the year.
They're probably ending up shutting it down.
They're playing for a lottery lottery.
How the story goes, he tells his boy.
Tanking is what?
They're tanking.
Tanking.
Tanking is the true word.
Actually, tanking is the word they use in the indictment.
So, actually, I'm going to say tanking.
He tells his boy De Niro, I'm shutting it down tonight.
I'm just going to play a couple minutes and I'm out.
The story goes, then his boy tells like other members of this same network of a handful of people, they all bet hundreds of thousands of dollars on the unders.
They all win.
But again, when this happens, it gets flagged immediately.
And when it happens, the NBA launches its own investigation.
The NBA can do one thing, few things.
They can take his phone, which they did.
They can interview him, which they did.
Then they can ask to talk to other relevant people on the team, get medical records, see if it was he really hurt, whatever.
They find out he was.
There's nothing on his phone that implicates him.
All right, cool.
They let him play.
The FBI, meanwhile, is investigating the hell out of this.
They're talking to his boy De Niro, probably.
They're talking to all those other friends.
Yeah.
And they come up with the assertion that Terry Rozio was in on it.
That these guys, De Niro, these other guys, allegedly went to his house with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from the winnings and gave it to him.
That's in the allegations.
Woof.
Damn.
But you're making $26 million.
He's making $26 million.
He had just signed a four-year $97 million.
I think what a lot of people don't realize is how many NBA players are degenerate gamblers.
Degenerate gamblers.
Like constantly gambling.
Like nonsense.
You hear this about golf too a lot.
Phil Michelson, there's rumors.
They're on the flights.
It's gambling nonsense.
Games on flights.
That happens.
That's right.
You're not gambling for the money.
You're gambling for the thrill of gambling.
It's literally competition.
You see the element of competition.
I mean, I heard with Terry, they didn't actually catch him because they waited for him to do it a second time.
So with Jante, they flagged the first one because these like crazy bets that came in on something that's kind of obscure.
And they're like, ooh, we think there's something up here.
And then he did it again.
John Tay, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So the second time, they're like, it's confirmed.
So I heard with Terry, they did it the first time and they were essentially waiting for him to do it again, but it never came.
And that's what I'm saying.
There's only one example.
Exactly.
There's only one example.
Now, how did they get to the point of like two and a half years of like investigating him and then we're putting him in cuffs?
It's because of all they clearly feel like they have enough evidence from his friend, from those other people in the network.
So there's a group of guys.
If you go back and read the, if you read the indictment, it's dozens of pages.
It's a guy named Eric, there's a guy named Shane.
There's all these guys that allegedly are the network.
So this guy, De Niro, tells Eric, Eric tells Shane, then Shane tells Marvis or whoever, like they're just going around and they're sharing this information, this inside information, and they're gambling in a way.
Now, Terry Rozier's perspective is, I'm just, and this is the other issue that the NBA has.
And I think you might know where I'm going with this.
Players in the league, this is like not abnormal.
They tell their boys and these people around them all the time.
So they don't know.
I don't think I'm playing them.
Inside Information Leaks00:15:13
Exactly.
Like LeBron.
So the other part is LeBron James.
So Damon Jones is another guy, but he was involved in both.
He was doing the poker and he was doing, and his was more flagrant.
They had Damon's messages.
He just broke.
And he said it.
He's hanging in I don't know.
He's broke.
He's hanging around rich people and that shit got to be painful.
You said it.
I didn't say anything.
Yeah.
So what if you're not going to deny that?
What if you knew the big man wasn't playing because he told you in the shooting?
So there were texts where Damon Jones is telling these same network of people, like, yo, put the, you know, put the house on Milwaukee.
Make sure your guy D Jones eats too.
Essentially is what he said.
But he, again, how is he giving that information?
Or a big player isn't playing for the Lakers, put the house on Milwaukee.
So he doesn't explicitly say, but we.
But then later that day, LeBron James gets declared out with an ankle injury.
And that's who the player he was referring.
And that's the guy who he was with in LA.
So the question is, and I'm not trying to like.
Is a problem for the league.
But again like, how do you, how do you jurisdict that?
How do you just stop?
It's gonna seem like i'm running defense for Lebron here and i'm really not, but like, the point i'm trying to say is like, is Lebron gonna risk a billion dollar empire?
So Damon Jones, Damon Jones gets yeah right, like it's, it's cheaper for him to just give Damon Jones money.
We can.
You gave him an assistant coaching job.
See, that's why i've asked about this Terry Rozier thing.
Like, if your boy wants money, just give him.
If he wants to make a hundred grand.
But it's like, then the then what I get responsive with is, he didn't know he was taking that information to sell it to a network of gamblers, exactly.
So how many players in the league today do that I?
I think a lot.
A lot of guys give information to people around them so real quick before.
So it's like it's, it's not it.
The idea is, are they giving information so their boys can make money, or are they simply having a conversation about what happens in their life?
And instantly, and then that guy takes that information which isn't inside information.
Think about this.
Think about like this, al you just okay, go go.
So I can see that point of view.
But how do you know ahead of time that you're gonna get injured because they're going out with injuries?
No no, there is no.
No no, it's different than Lebron.
No no no, Lebron James situation.
He's right though, like Lebron James essentially like in this example, as it's alleged before the public knew that he was gonna be out with an ankle injury, Damon Jones tells a group of bettors, yo, Lebron's out, bet on Milwaukee for this game.
He's out and then six hours later it comes out more, but Rosier.
It has happened where players are going into the game and like they're gonna play this game and then they're out.
You know like, this is the game I.
I know of at least a few examples off the top of my head where i'm like this guy's gonna play this game and he's gonna have to have surgery.
You know i'm not.
Yeah, there's nothing i'm doing with that information.
I'm a reporter.
So if they tell their, their camp that it's like you, now it's like, are players gonna program themselves differently?
Like, do I not tell my best friend, do I just leave it to, just telling my trainer and my agent, and are you gonna impose punitive damages on players for sharing information, like with your, even your trainer.
Can you tell your trainer your ankle hurts because your trainer could tell his boy, yo put everything on, I look at.
You have to tell your trainer.
It is different though.
Yeah, it is different and it does look a little different.
And again, the FBI is alleging that Terri Rozier was in on it.
Like, let's be clear here, the FBI is fully alleging that he was in on it right, that he was getting the, the proceeds of the, of the, of the winnings.
Yeah, Terri Rozier's like yo I just said it to him just as a friend what he did with the information that's on him.
Yeah which again, that does happen all the time.
If all these players had people around them that were just betting with the information, we'd be seeing this all over the league.
Yeah, but I think a lot of.
I think we've had a couple bad apples.
I think the NB has had a couple bad apples, and now, from here, what more can be unearthed?
I think the fact that it gone from like a handful of these guys in 2024.
Now we're at over 30, it's already multiplied by six.
Also, check it.
We're talking about like mob guys who put crazy money on these prop bets.
How many of like your friends just put 5k Down 50 bucks?
You're 50 bucks and you just made some quick money.
How many of your friends, like you knew LeBron is going to be out because hobbling around?
So it's the janitor who's cleaning up the floor, all of a sudden goes, Hey, I'll bet you $100 that the Lakers lose today.
Like this information has always swirled around.
There's just a way to make crazy amounts of money on it.
So now you're doing illegal things within legal parameters also.
Before it was all illegal.
Now gambling is legal.
We're just doing illegal things with it.
And it's just a little bit murkier.
And it's like, who's doing the illegal thing?
Like, it's not illegal for a player to say how they feel to their friends, or do you make that illegal?
But if the friend takes that information and then puts the house down, in the words of what I guess that tech said that, and then you also tell a network of gamblers.
Oh, that's fucked up.
I'm saying that's fucked up, but I'm like, how much can we blame the players?
Like, if Terry's getting this, if Terry's getting a scrape, like, do we literally tell the players, you're not allowed to talk to anybody during the season?
You're not allowed to have conversations with people.
That's not realistic.
Exactly.
So it's like if LeBron's, LeBron's kids know if his fucking ankle's fucked up.
All it takes is one of them being like, man, did you see dad hobbling around?
Then his friend tells somebody.
His friend comes over, sees LeBron hobbling around, says, you know what?
So do you just get rid of prop bets?
Again, I will say this.
I didn't really start getting the nitty-gritty of betting until last week when I knew I had to talk on TV about this.
I didn't know what the under, I don't know what any of this meant, but it seems to me like where you can get that nice ass Jack Season.
Hey, you know, it's the big bucks, my guy was so early.
Whoa's paying for it.
Could you explain prop bets?
I don't gamble at all.
What is a prop bet?
We were explaining it before.
It was basically betting like it's the unders, right?
Under six assists.
So they're like specified.
It's not like winner losing the game.
Got it.
Like if you, and that's where like a lot of guys will go, you know, that's where like if a guy's purposely missing shots or in baseball, they're like purposely, I don't know, like creating errors or something like that.
You'd be striking out.
This is weird.
Striking out is almost understandable because it's so hard to hit a fucking baseball.
But with basketball, these prop bets, like anybody can go, okay, what am I at?
Seven rebounds?
Watch me get six rebounds and nobody will even notice.
And the second I get six, I can pull myself out of the game.
That's the thing.
We can't force players to play.
So at any point in time, they can just say, I'm hurt.
And then they're a hundred million dollar investment from a franchise.
They go, well, don't play them because we don't want to hurt them more.
Well, the fact that it's regulated to the sports books, if someone places a crazy bet on a suit, niche, weird thing, it's going to get flagged.
They're going to pick it up.
What is that amount?
Yeah, exactly.
What if it's a thousand bucks?
Well, they just have to have a threshold.
But this is the other thing.
The NBA would pay my side, bitches.
Just know the number that gets flagged and just bet $100.
Just a little, yeah.
I mean, the NBA, that's the thing that the NBA and these sports books are, I know they're having conversations right now.
They have to figure out how do you better regulate and deal with these, I think specifically the prop bets is the big issue.
Like I've heard some people say just eliminate them.
Like take it off the board.
Yeah.
You know, but they need to figure out how do you do that and how do you do it in a way that it's really regulating this process.
Because these sports books are picking it up.
Like if a group of like six people are going like, you know, I don't know the number, but if they're going all in on one specific thing and it's like very niche and it's weird.
And I think the one thing on three on assists, the one thing that they have done, I think they've removed like two ways.
I think they're either in the process or going to remove the two ways.
Two-way players.
So it's not like standard contracts, but two-way players.
I think that might be a first step because you're thinking about who's really betting on two-way players.
That's what Jante Porter was.
He was a two-way player.
That's a great piece.
Also, the idea is you're making so much money as an NBA player that you wouldn't risk it, Terry Rozier, on making a couple bucks a game.
But a two-way player was making 500k, they need that.
That might be a thing, but they need to figure that part out.
And the other thing that I know the league is trying to figure out is injury reporting.
So, injury reporting essentially, guys will be listed doubtful, then questionable, then they'll play, or some guys might be listed doubtful or out, and then they'll suddenly play, or the reverse.
They'll be out and then they'll play, and that'll you know mess everything up.
What's tricky for the gambling companies?
You make so much on prof bets, so I'm cutting a huge revenue stream because some people fix it.
That's I got to lose all this money because some bad actors, and then the NBA, you know what I mean?
How do you, what is the dollar amount?
If we let that leak, then you're gonna see a bunch of bets right under that threshold.
Now, do we flag that?
You have to keep that number internal as well.
You can't tell anybody what the threshold is.
You got to keep that quiet, and then we just watch.
And the prep bets are fun, like it makes you want to watch throughout the game because before when you just bet on the outcome, then it's like whatever.
I'll just wait and see who like wins.
Dude, in the Super Bowl, what color is the Gatorade?
What's the fucking color?
How long is the national anthem gonna go?
These are bets that everybody gets in on.
Yeah, so again, I don't know the solution, but I know for sure the NBA has got somewhat of a, I mean, they're in their own words, this is a dire problem, there's a dire risk that comes with the gambling.
And so, they're they're really trying to get on the same page with the sports books and trying to figure out how do they come up with the right measures because that's what this is: is like because people were able to bet on these two-way players with the Jante Porter thing, that's why that popped off.
And so, is there like a threshold of player you just eliminate from those prop bets?
Do you just leave it to the upper class of players?
I don't, I don't know what the solution is, but that's on you know, the league's got to figure that out.
Sorry, and you might not know this.
I would love if you'd even just speculate: how does the mafia get involved?
Like, how does the mafia get to Chauncey Billup?
How does that whole thing happen?
I so that's the illegal poker games.
So, and those games are like in, I think it was like what Kash Patel said was 11 states.
It was the stuff was moving around.
So, he's talking about their games in New York, games in Vegas, games in LA, games, I mean, all these different states.
And yeah, I mean, I think what they did is they made a connection with Chauncey Billups.
Damon Jones and Chauncey Billips, uh, they have a relationship, like going back to their playing days, coaching Tylu, too.
Like, all there's a network of Vulcan Ty, Tylu too religious to get caught up in this essentially.
There's a face card, they call it a face card, right?
Yeah, where see, but there's a difference between showing up and playing and knowing.
But if you what the FBI is saying, you could be the mark.
The FBI is alleged.
See, think about it from this perspective: Chauncey Bill shows up and plays, but has no idea that this game is being run by the mafia, yeah, and that he's being used as a face card.
What if he just got presented a deal, appearance fee of $50,000, show up, play this poker with these bunch of random people, bring your friends, I give you $10,000 for every friend you bring?
They don't know, and you leave, yeah, but he has no idea.
Was he winning every go, go?
But what the FBI is alleging, yeah, is that he was in on it, that he knew everything was going on, and that he was purposefully going about cheating the game and cheating the fish, as they called it.
Yeah, that's the allegations.
Now, the FBI is gonna have to prove that in court, Chauncey Billips' camp and Rozier's camp for that.
That matters, they made it clear they're innocent.
You saw that professional poker player that came out, he came out two years prior.
So, was it one of those things?
Yeah, so let's say, let's say in the world, Chauncey Billips is innocent.
Yeah, so everyone.
You know what the professional poker player said, real quick?
He said that he was told essentially, I'm paraphrasing, paraphrasing here.
He was told about these poker games for multiple times, but he knew that it was a rigged game, that it was a cheap game.
Yeah, and he bypassed participating multiple times.
This is the guy right here.
Oh, here it is.
And then he went on McAfee show too, and basically gave the whole breakdown.
Oh, no way.
Recently, but like two years prior.
So everyone in the poker world knew that these games were fixed.
I mean, who wants to play poker with Chauncey Phillips that bet?
I love Chauncey Phillips, too.
I love Chauncey Bills.
I love him.
Hall of Famer.
They about to strip that shit.
That's gone.
It was all built around Chauncey Phillips.
But I had some friends who went and played it both in LA and in Vegas.
And it obviously was for sure confirmed to be cheated.
People who clearly didn't even understand the rules of Millivan Hold'em are just jamming hundreds of big blinds in with like a big blinds.
And then just drilling it over.
Only the pros are losing.
Well, it's tough too whenever you're dealing with somebody like high profile like that because there's a little bond.
They carry a lot of weight and hold a lot of power.
So all you can do is like kind of unite together and threaten to publicly out him or extort him in some sort of capacity.
So there's a big blind and little blind in no limit poker and hold and poker.
So basically it's two players have to put money out on the table.
Before cards even before cards.
And then what you can do is other people can match the big blind if they want to see the cards that come out later.
Remember on the river, you ever watch poker where you see them fold the three cards out?
And everybody shares those cards in the middle.
So if you see your cards and you see everybody else's cards, because that's how the glasses work, basically you know the hand that everybody has.
Not the full hand, but you know at that point.
So what you would do is like bet tons of money on the blind.
Like you would match the blind and then you would maybe raise it because you know that you have pocket aces and everybody else has shit.
Yeah.
So you have a lot of confidence and what he's going all in.
But not even all that, but what he's saying is like they were betting in ways that you don't really understand the game because like if you did have a great hand, you would probably slow play it to make you think you were going to win.
Yeah.
You know what I mean?
But like the guys were so bad that it actually convinced the good poker players to be like, nah, that was pure luck.
There's no way.
Yeah.
Oh my God.
So again, there's two different, you know, the FBI's got to prove it, but they're alleging that Chauncey Phillips was in on it, that he knew that this game was being cheat.
And I mean, what is the connected to the mafia and how the mafia is involved in all this?
I mean, obviously they're fronting this.
They're the leaders in this.
They're, I assume, profiting, gaining some profit from all of this, taking money from all these people and then paying upfront to Damian Jones and Chauncey Phillips.
Now, again, why are these people coming to...
I can't answer that.
Why are these people coming to play with Damian Jones and Chauncey Billips?
I don't know.
Yeah.
Well, I guess there's some people that are like, they love playing poker, and I guess you can play with an NBA player.
But then there are a group of people that did show up and would just be there, stand there.
Like Kevin Garnett was, to my understanding, he showed up to a game thinking it was a party that he was invited to, but it was poker.
And I guess he doesn't play poker.
So he just left.
So how many of those guys did that?
Like, are you involved in that?
You get a lot of insider information.
Protecting Insider Sources00:10:16
Do you ever have to protect certain people because they tend to give you a lot of insider information?
Yeah, be honest, bro.
Players.
Maybe not.
Let's play poker.
Clutch, bro.
Clutch.
Where's your hoodie?
I know you got a hoodie, bro.
So for me, my job is information, period.
So like, whether it's about this person or that person, I think at this point, I think I've built a reputation that I'm going to have to do my job.
Now, the one thing I try to always do with any type of information that I have, whether it's league related, player-related, team-related, like, I'm going to reach out.
I'm going to do all the reach outs necessary.
Like, I'm not just going to put it out without you knowing that it's coming out.
Unless, I mean, I really have to.
Like, if it's bang, bang, the guy's getting arrested and I know it.
And I don't have the time to reach out to whoever it is from whatever team or player representative.
Like, I'm going to do my job.
I got to do it.
Um, but no, I mean, I think I have a job to do.
I'm always gonna do it to the best of my ability.
I don't look at it as protecting or not protecting.
I think about it, how do I do it responsibly?
How do I do it fairly?
And at the end of the day, accurately, that's like give you information with the like over and over again with the idea implied or stated explicitly that, like, you are if some comes bad about my guy, maybe keep that quiet because we keep feeding you information.
Well, I think the relationship allows for context and for me to like listen to that side, that other side.
But I think at this point, I've reported on so much positive, negative, and in between that I think everyone has just realized that like I'm going to do my job and I'm going to do it the best.
There's been situations where you burned a bridge or somebody got pissed off at you or whatever.
I mean, there's hard conversations every day that I have to have.
You know, if there's something I'm reporting that someone doesn't want, report.
I mean, that's a hard conversation.
If there's something that, you know, if I have the truth of a story and the other side is like, no, no, no, that's not what it is, but I know that's what it is.
I'm going to stand on it.
I mean, it happened last year with Jimmy Butler.
I don't know how much you guys followed the Jimmy Butler situation, but essentially, yeah, the one when he was trying to get out of Miami, when he did eventually get out of Miami.
So there was a period of weeks where I reported he was open in trade talks.
Yeah.
He was open to leaving.
These are teams he wants to go to.
Pat Riley came out with a statement that we're not trading Jimmy Butler.
But again, that's his perspective.
So if I called the heat and they said, we're not trading him, but I know where this is at.
I know the truth on this.
Either I'm going to trust my sourcing, which I did.
I take their position into context.
I'm sure in our ESPN news story, we put this what Pat Riley said.
Yeah.
But I'm standing on the truth.
So to answer your question, long story short, like there's always going to be those conversations to make sure I get the perspective and the context.
But I don't look at it as protecting as not protecting.
I think I'm protecting someone if I'm giving, like, if I'm writing a bad story, let's say I'm writing a story that I know is bad toward you, right?
Let's say, like, I'm going to call you before that story comes out.
I'll get your perspective, but like, and then it's on me to figure out how do I want to handle it?
You know, do I want to add a perspective itself?
Do you ever have people like what I would do is if I was in the league is I would call you and I would feed you information to shape a narrative before another one could take hold.
You know, I'd be like, yo, this is it.
This is what happened.
I'm going to give this to you right now.
And now we're getting ahead of the narrative.
So how do you defend against that?
I mean, I feel like that does that has to happen eventually, whether it's at any level of this, whether you're reporting on a player or a team, whatever.
What I try to do to combat situations like that or deal with situations like that is like, I have to get every perspective.
So if I'm getting a perspective about a certain team or a player or a situation, you know, like league issues are different though, right?
Like if you're, if, um, can we pause here?
Yeah, go.
Yo, I'm in a podcast tasting taping something urgent.
We're just gonna tag you on the I got yeah, yeah, they just texted me too.
All right, thought is tag you.
What is it?
It's just the appeal.
Yeah, yeah.
Uh, yeah, that's fine.
Okay.
All right, bye.
Bye.
Wow.
So I heard it right.
So LeBron is retiring after this year.
I just heard that.
So what was that?
He's locked in.
Give him a second.
All right.
Tweeted.
We're back.
Yeah, we're back.
What was the question?
I don't even remember the question.
I forget what the question is, but I want to.
So basically, the NBPA, the players' union, is going to appeal and challenge the NBA's decision to take Terry Rozier's pay while he's on this unpaid leave.
Yeah, they got to fight for the player snaps.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
So here's the thing.
We've learned so far that people with access to information Close to players can are targets of corrupt individuals trying to make money.
Have you ever been targeted by the mafia?
Never.
Never.
They never tried to like cozy up, or not even the mafia, like degenerate gamblers.
They're never like, yo, give me something.
Never?
I mean, you'll have the occasional person like, yo, man, it's this guy playing.
Yo, where's this guy going?
I feel like you must get that every day, jokingly, at least.
Like, yo, where's the brand?
Where's this?
The one I really get a lot is, where's this guy going?
Yeah.
Is this guy going to ask for a trade?
Oh, because we're going to ask you that.
Yeah.
We'll get there.
Where's this guy going?
Or like, I usually, the thing that I get most is like trades, signings.
Like, if like LeBron, like LeBron next year is a free agent, the question I'll get in the lead up, where's the Bronco?
Where's the Bronco going?
Like, that's what I get.
People don't necessarily ask me, is this guy sitting or is he having this information?
Yeah, like, maybe that, you know, that's a good thing.
Hopefully, this podcast doesn't start that.
I feel like I am pretty good, though, at like just smiling and like laughing and like moving on about my day.
I don't, yeah, like, because I, my job, like, you'll read it on my Twitter.
If I have something, you'll read it on my Twitter.
Like, I'm not going to give you my information now.
Like, that's not going to happen.
Well, that's a good question.
Has there ever been something that was like so potentially destructive to a player or the league where you couldn't release it that I haven't?
That I never did.
No, because everything that I've got that, like, if I felt like it rose to the level of like, yo, this is a big deal.
I have to do the job.
I mean, I'm doing the job.
So it's 10 times out of 10.
I'm doing the job.
Have you ever had people pressure you, though?
Like agents and shit come to me.
Don't do this.
Hey, please don't do it.
We'll give you another piece of information or we'll give you another leak over here if you don't release this.
I mean, those types of trade-offs, I feel like the tit for tat, that happens all the time.
But at the end of the day, if I feel like I need to report it, like whether I'm reporting it in an hour or I'm reporting it in a day, like I'm reporting it.
So you might give them 24 hours.
You might give them time.
Like, I'll give you a great example.
Yes.
Rudy Gobert testing positive for COVID.
Now, think about that.
Think about the impact that had on the league.
Think about the impact that had in real time.
What occurred after that.
And like, I sat on that for like an hour and a half, you know, like, because not only internally, I can't say that.
At the athletic, we had, I was working at the athletic at the time.
We had a group of lawyers and like, this is the first time COVID had been reported on in sports.
Like an hour or two later, like I think Tom Hanks tested positive with his wife.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And like it had just started trickling.
And then Rudy Gobert hit and it was like, boom, she just yeah.
Like I was on CNN that next night, that night, the next day, I was on CNN like a dozen times that year just because the intersection of like social justice, health.
But like I had to sit on that not only internally for lawyers, but like it was such a sensitive thing with player, team, league, like all of that combined.
Dude, the U.S. economy crashed the next day.
Those two, Tom Hanks and then Rudy Gobert.
It went from, I dropped it.
Because everything shut down.
Yeah, exactly.
Everything shut down.
But at the end of the day, this is how I look at it.
They're not always going to like it, but they're going to respect it.
And that's how I move.
And I feel like at the end of the day, like relationships are the biggest form of currency for me.
Like that's the biggest thing.
Have you ever been threatened with a relationship?
Are they ever like, if you release this, then don't ever come to us for a leak.
We're going to somebody else.
We're going to some young new kid.
You get that, but at the end of the day, you got to stand on business.
But then those same people you still interact with.
Have you ever gotten a negative response where like you call someone up, you're like, hey, I need to get your side and they just cuss you out?
That's happened plenty of times.
Really?
That's happened plenty.
But again, I view it as part of it.
If you're not willing to have hard conversations, like the one thing about me, I feel like I'm very accessible.
Like you can always reach me.
I'm always going to answer.
Like, I'm here for the hard conversations.
Now, the people that I reach out to that don't want to have those hard conversations, I'm going to report.
I'm going to do the job.
They don't want those hard conversations.
I do.
So, I mean, I feel like if you're doing this job at a high, high level and you're not having those hard conversations, I think either you're not doing the job at a high level or you're not doing the job the right way.
Without specific names, what's the craziest thing someone said to you on the phone?
That's fun.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Say that one.
That's fun.
Whatever one just came to your head right there.
Say that one.
Right there.
I'll just say, you know, threats of physical violence are always up there, but I haven't been assaulted yet.
Who are you?
Someone's like, if you release this, I'm going to beat the shit out of you.
Yeah, but like, again, people in the state of where they're at, anything can come out of their mouth.
Got it, got it.
So they're just acting emotionally.
Yeah, but like, again, I'm someone that I feel like people who know me who are going to end up watching this, I think of myself as a pretty like easygoing.
Like, I'm not an emotional state of mind person that like everything you say, I'm going to like take to heart and then I'm going to like come on the defensive and I'm going to tell like, yeah.
I know how it is, especially with news that's like negative.
If you're a team person, I'm reporting about a coach or something happened or if I'm talking to an agent and something happens with the player, like, and if it's negative and you don't want it out there, like, I understand.
Like, I'm putting myself in their shoes and I'm here for the conversations.
I understand any sense of emotion people are feeling.
Negative Stories And Emotions00:06:33
Are there any topics you stay away from?
Because we had Stephen A here and he was like, he'll get scoops about personal stuff, but he never takes any personal information to the air.
He teaches basketball.
Yeah, I feel like I keep it basketball.
Like, if it impacts basketball, like if a player having a birth of a child or if a player like, you know, having a, you know, like having a scandal like that I know I'm going to have to report on that's going to like if a guy misses a game or misses on court stuff because of that, that's when I have to touch on it.
But for me, I stay away from.
Like a cheating scandal is not something you're interested in.
Yeah, no.
The most TMZ I've gone is the Emei Yudoka situation when that was going on.
That was wild.
Unbelievable.
Neil Long.
And I got the proper confirmations to report about the relationship he had internally with the staffer, the improper relationship that he had and that ended up leading to his ouster in Boston.
Now he's in Houston, by the way.
Amazing.
Doing an amazing job in his life.
He's a great coach, dude.
He's one of the top coaches.
Just got a massive new extension this offseason.
Keep your wife away.
He's beloved.
Keep your wife away, though.
Is he cracking someone's wife?
Right?
It was somebody's wife he was cracking.
A player's wife?
Allegedly?
I don't think it was a player's wife.
It wasn't a player's wife.
No, no.
Staff member.
But that was a staff member's wife.
Yeah, he was using his staff member.
Also, guys, show dates again.
Chicago theater.
I'm coming April 24th.
Also, we have a possibly huge announcement coming soon for the East Coast.
But coming up soon, I got Orlando Funnybone, November 7th and 8th.
Those tickets are almost sold out.
Also, tickets are already almost sold out for Cobbs in San Francisco, November 21st through 23rd.
December 4th through 6th, Irvine, California tickets are also almost sold out.
Get your tickets to those shows and every other show day from the Generational Trauma Tour, AkashSing.com.
Do not buy your tickets from a third-party site.
Go to AkashSing.com.
People keep telling me they're getting scammed.
I'm so sorry.
Please buy your tickets from AkashSing.com and the links on that page.
I love you guys.
Thank y'all.
Good afternoon, people.
My name is Mark Gagnon, and I'm going to be coming to your city.
Yes, I'm going to be in New York City, actually, November 11th.
We got two shows part of the New York Comedy Fest.
You can check that out on my website.
Also, we got Denver, Colorado, Hoboken, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Fort Wayne, Detroit, Chicago.
I can't wait to meet you and shake your hand.
All right.
Come on, hang out with your boy.
His hand, suck his dick, peace out.
Yeah, there was a bubble, like man, the bubble is wild.
There were shorties in there.
There were.
How did they sneak the shorties in there, like that's what we need to know.
Were they making them work?
Did they have to clean the rooms or something?
I I I, I didn't see any.
You didn't see any.
I don't see any.
There was no shorties in the bubble.
No, I saw, I saw none, you saw none none.
Zero, oh wow.
The only thing I saw were meals being delivered outside my room when I was in quarantine.
Female or male, I couldn't even tell.
You can't leave the room until the food is already there.
You hear the, you know you hear it fall.
I mean, these are, these are alpha alpha, alpha males full of testosterone.
You can't have balls that inflated.
You know what I mean for real, like they need to.
They need to let it out, they need to let loose.
They didn't just have some come in for like a week or two stint just to drain them.
They need to deflate me.
They must have sent a few in there just to deflate them.
They must have, they must have.
I don't know about that one.
I don't know about that one.
I I not, I didn't see any.
Now, they might not have wanted to wander.
Where I was at the hotel area I was at.
Yeah yeah, it's probably the stayaway zone, fair enough.
The only thing I saw with the players would was that there was a restaurant.
A lot of guys would go to yeah, the center of, like a lake, and then you would see guys like Anthony Davis and Lebron like riding bikes okay, across to the restaurant by the bubble yeah, to the restaurant by the lake.
So maybe the restaurant by the lake was the big dates.
Yeah, the media couldn't go in.
Was it even a lake?
Or just women dripping on a ground?
Alligators oh, there was alligators in there too.
I ever seen an alligator chomp down on something and they never let go.
They never let go.
Man, it's crazy in the bubble.
You see, i'm just just painting code over here.
Yeah, that's it.
We're just.
We're just guys hanging.
We didn't see anything.
You want to tell us what he heard?
You want to tell us what he knows?
I heard a lot of stuff in the bubble.
I heard a lot of stuff in the bubble.
What'd you hear?
I mean, my first week there, the players boycotted.
There's a boycott.
Remember when the players boycotted the games, talking about no, but why do you think they was boycotted?
They sent in the only fans and all of a sudden they wanted to play basketball again.
No, they were the only fans.
They gotta leave, you gotta leave.
You gotta leave.
What do you mean?
No, i'm saying if they actually did bring them in, you know, you give them a little excursion, wait how?
But you could take them out, you could.
You could get out of the bubble.
I thought you can't get out of the bubble.
You can't get out of the bubble.
No one got out of the bubble, but they had.
There had to be people that got into the bubble.
You sneak them in as like a cafeteria.
I didn't see that happen.
No, I know you didn't.
Did you notice that the staff was like inordinately hot?
Yeah, like the cleaning lady?
Barely.
There's barely any people there, just some dogs in there.
So if they did it, if they did it, it was they went back.
That was vintage.
I didn't see anything when they used to have to work for it.
What happened to reporting the facts?
Fans, if I don't see it, I don't, see it.
Well, you just see.
Most of the stories you report on.
You hear from sources I didn't get any sources on that.
That's maybe they know i'm not seeking that.
That's that's listen.
That's pop now listen.
It's like jail in there were the gay players popular.
It's a great question.
That's a great question.
I, I mean, you got to think about it.
I mean, were they trying to think about throwing that thing in a circle?
These are, these are some hot topics for me.
I mean, how are your dms?
Just constantly, I saw this person here, all right like, are there people trying to people trying to give me tips on stories?
Is that, is that common?
I mean I, I would say sometimes fun fact, my brother actually runs my my, my public instagram.
No, I love that.
Yeah, that's what's up.
Keeping the family.
That's the only guy I trust.
Yeah.
Was that who we met just out there?
No, no, no, no.
My little brother.
No, that was.
Hemp Supplement Break00:03:32
Who is that guy?
That's a PR guy.
That's Indian.
He's talking something.
That was an Indian dude.
Oh, my Lord.
No, I'm just telling you, they're not related at all.
But I know, I didn't know that he was Indian, you know.
Yeah.
But, okay, so you're not related to that guy at all.
No, I'm not related to him, but my brother monitors my Instagram.
I was about to say, handles that.
I don't see any DMs.
Because you absorbed the fuck out of the good-looking jeans if that was the case.
Come on, bro.
I got his handsome.
I'm junking, my boy.
The guy's like 6'4, 6'6'4, beautiful beard.
He's very handsome.
Come on in, curly hair.
Get your ass in it.
We're in the bubble, baby.
Sneak them in.
Sneak them in.
No, that's your PR guy.
That's the ESPNPR guy.
Oh, that's ESPNPR.
Yes.
What's his name?
Ronce.
Ronce.
Yeah, he's getting a shout-out.
Yo, Ronce, shout-out.
You, Ronce.
Ron's a legend.
I heard you was cleaning up in a bubble, my boy.
Oh, my God.
Was he down in a bubble?
I didn't see him down there.
You didn't see much.
You didn't see much of nothing down there.
I saw what I needed to see.
I like other games.
Yeah, yeah.
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Hooping Back In The Day00:15:07
I heard you hooped.
I did hoop back in the day.
I did.
Back in the back of the day.
Yeah, yeah.
You got some NBA ties.
You know, I do have some NBA ties.
And you know that I beat Jay Williams in a one-on-one game.
Wow.
Did you not know this?
I saw some footage.
This is a thing of legends.
This is OG stuff.
I let him think that the game was going to be close.
And then when it came down to it.
It was one-on-one to seven or something.
He got spotted six.
I didn't ask for six.
But they spotted you six.
He said, I gave you six points.
I was like, that's the dumbest thing you've ever done outside of getting on a motorcycle.
Oh, shit.
I think I remember this.
I remember this.
I do remember this.
Oh, shit.
You just got to go to the end.
Oh, that's a young Schultz.
Yeah, look at my boy.
Let's go.
Okay, look, he bounced the ball off my head, tries to pull up on me.
Not going to happen.
Got the rebound.
Okay, so I pull up.
Obviously, missed on purpose.
Rebounce!
Rebounce!
I'm amazed you got that rebound out of him.
Come on, bro.
He's not going to box me out.
Okay, look at me.
Go right at the ankle.
I'm going right at the ankle.
I said, See ya.
Oh, my God.
No, you put the move on him for real.
And then he recovered to be on.
He did recover fast as shit.
He's amazing ass.
Did you make this?
Of course, I made it.
Oh, it was.
That was your only point.
You only needed one point.
I don't score the amount that I need.
It was six.
He got six in a row.
He tried to beat you on that.
Oh, that's disrespectful.
Yeah, he tried to dispense.
That's what he gets.
But I don't lose.
I've never lost a game one-on-one.
We got to play next time.
Oh, I can hoop.
I can hoop.
There's some footage of me shooting.
He looks like you.
Hold on.
Did you ever play with the NBA team in the city?
No.
Not like an actual NBA team, like the league team that plays in like the suburb.
Suburb.
I played middle school, high school.
No, no, no.
I'm saying like the NBA Association plays in a league in the city.
But you live in the suburbs of Chicago.
But I never, no, I didn't play in that.
Okay.
Yeah, no.
All right.
All right.
But there's footage of my jumper.
Hold on, hold on.
Let's get some footage up.
I want you to rate this jumper.
There's got to be some footage.
All right, while you're pulling it up, what's the hierarchy of like where you get most of your scoops?
Is it coming from players, execs, friends of players?
Like who's really finished with the majority of them?
Everyone.
Like anyone you can think of that's associated with the league.
Like sometimes my favorite is when people guess.
Like when I break something, people are going to guess, where did you get this from?
Because they have no idea.
Okay.
I mean, it could be anywhere.
You think about the areas, right?
League, team, players, anyone else around any of those areas, basically.
You ever caught me a security guard?
You ever cause problems on a team?
Yeah.
Because like you leaked information and people are like, who the fuck is the leak?
And do they come to you like, yo, you need to tell us who the leak is because you shouldn't know this?
I have been asked that, but it's always hypothetically because they know I'll never say.
So what is the way that they ask?
How do they?
I know you won't say, but, but, and it's like, you answered that.
I won't say.
Yeah.
Yeah, what do they think?
Yeah.
Wow.
You ever get wind and dine?
Does anyone ever take you out and like maybe give you a little gift for Christmas or something?
Just to give you a clutch hoodie.
That's your jumper right there.
That's my jumper.
But there's more footage, man.
Oh, here's one.
Here's one.
Okay.
No, it's a nice.
Look at that.
Hey, that's not bad.
But wide shoulders, too.
Damn.
Yeah.
No, no.
Come on.
Yeah, you little transformer.
There's more.
There's more.
There's got to be more.
Oh, no, this ain't it.
What's this one?
Oh, actually, there is.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That was with a man in Asar Thompson.
Oh, wow.
What WNBA player do you think you beat one-on-one?
I think I would get cooked by any professional athlete.
After seeing me beat a professional athlete.
I think I could beat you, though.
But I'd beat an NBA player.
I'd beat him.
How did you six points?
He was the number.
But he wants to do that.
He was the number one pick.
He was the number one pick.
He was maybe one of the winners.
He's 41.
It's over.
He's almost 42.
His ankles are fucked.
It's over.
I feel like you still got it, though.
No, I played him.
He was nice.
He was nice.
Needed if I needed what I didn't do on Jay, because I feel like it would be too disrespectful, is I didn't want to dunk on him.
But if it was no, I didn't want to dunk back in the day, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I saw him dunk on a kid 5'3.
On him, left hand, though.
On him.
On is different than just having a clear layer.
It's different.
So I'm saying, so Jay, if I, what am I going to do?
Humiliate him?
I kept the game close out of respect for him.
This is a person that I like and respect.
Good guy.
Yeah, yeah.
So I came.
I've never told you never shut up.
Oh, there's footage of you dunking.
Now, this is me old, guys.
This is me old.
Oh, with the left.
Oh, that's light.
It's just easy.
Oh, and you got post videos.
Looking at the camera right now, man.
You see this?
Got the towel around his neck.
This is me dunking on a Saturday.
Oh, look at this.
Come on, man.
Did you think you had a different flow back then?
Back in the day was crazy.
Propetia did wonders for me.
Okay, so did you always think that you were going to be the insider?
You thought you were going to be like a just like a, what is it called?
Like an op-ed journalist talking about the game.
When does this happen where you go, I'm the information, dude?
People like talking to me.
And yeah, I mean, I think it came kind of on accident, but it also came like, I love like news.
So I love like the trades, signings, free agency, like all that stuff.
I grew up like being obsessed with, you know, at the time, you know, growing up in Chicago, you're like, who are the bulls going to trade for?
Who are they going to sell?
What's going to happen here?
What's going to happen there?
What's going on in this locker room?
When is this coach getting fired?
When is this coach getting hired?
Dude, the decision when LeBron almost went to Chicago.
I'm doing the math.
You were like 18 at the time.
That was a big time for me, though.
Cause I think that's when I think I started a Twitter then.
Like I started to really get involved with trying to pay attention to what's going on with these teams and where's this player going.
And I think player movement, team decisions, things like that, I started getting obsessed with.
And so I played.
Then once I got cut in high school, it's like, all right, I have to, if I'm going to stay around the NBA, I have to do something.
Whether it's being an agent, whether it's being on the team side, whether it's writing, whether it was, you know, anything I wanted to do.
Because as Akash knows, or Akash knows, you know, for me, it's like lawyer, doctor, accountant.
Like, that's what I think my mom really wanted me to do.
My mom really wanted me to get healthcare.
I haven't heard this one since like high school.
No, no, no, no.
This is actually from a video.
This is not a 9-11 joke.
This is easy to pilot grant.
Have you seen this?
No.
Oh, my God.
You got to bring this up.
I'm like, damn, I haven't heard this since high school.
It's so much less racist once you see the video.
This is a Pakistani school.
It's a Pakistani school, and it's the kids are coming up and saying what they want to be when they're older.
So each kid has their own.
I always wanted to be an NBA player.
So for me, that was like my number one thing.
Then once I realized I couldn't do it, it's figuring out how can I stay close to the house.
How can you be around the game?
So my sophomore year of high school, my English teacher goes, you should just write.
You're really good at writing and you love basketball.
Combine both passions.
That's what I did.
Oh, wow.
Then you write for the school newspaper, then you write for a Bulls blog, then you write for another website, realgm.com.
I don't know.
You have to be like, you have to be like nitty gritty NBA basketball.
You know what realgm.com is?
Like, it's a rumor site.
I used to be obsessed with it.
And I would just like refresh all day that and hoops hype and just like follow everything.
And like, I was obsessed with that.
And so these are the years before Twitter when we actually had to go to like websites to get inside.
This is like 20, this is between 2008 to like 2014.
All right, here we go.
Go back to the beginning.
Yeah, I haven't seen this.
I cannot believe as a Pakistani man.
I haven't seen this.
You haven't seen this.
He's the pilot, Greg.
Men have been through our time when we are meant to park and destroy England.
How many times have you seen this?
Dude, brown people love this one.
My wife and I talk this all the time.
I haven't seen this.
So that's what I want to be pilot is.
Oh, you've never heard that?
No.
See, I'm like, we're beyond racism.
I'm the NBA.
I'm like NBA fan.
He's all NBA memes.
God, okay.
All right, let me ask you another brown question.
I love brown love.
I do.
But I have to ask, what's up with you and Kay Adams?
Great friend.
Oh, this friend.
I think we're great on TV.
I worked with her at great chemistry.
She'd be giving you rhythm on TV.
She does throw rhythm, bro.
I don't blame her.
You know, I've really enjoyed working with her on TV.
It's been fun.
I mean, you powered through that, unbelievably.
That was really good.
I mean, that was phenomenal.
That was an amazing political answer right there.
That's professional because you both work.
But we work together.
Exactly.
We work together.
We had to do that.
No, there's no such thing as workers romance ever in the history of TV.
But she's actually genuinely a good friend.
Good for a friend.
So nothing else going on.
No, no.
No.
But if there was a time in the future where you guys weren't both working at the same organization, you know?
Yeah, I mean, for me, I'm so work-focused.
Yeah.
My whole day.
I'm sorry, Kay.
I'm sorry, Kay.
My whole days are just absorbed by this, what I'm doing on a daily basis.
And so.
She's a beautiful woman.
I don't mean that in a way.
Talented.
Super special ways.
Super talented.
And her ability to like...
Charismatic.
See, for me, the stuff that I talk about is really serious.
I feel I could be very serious at different points.
Like her, Pat McAfee, they do a great job of bringing personality.
Like doing this podcast brings different personality out.
Maybe people don't see all of that.
So she brings out the joy in you, brings the personality.
Yeah.
Her Pat McAfee do a great job of that.
Yeah, but also just her as well.
Yeah, you don't need to throw Pat.
I don't really got nothing to do with it.
Yeah, you did that.
Pat's actually a whole different sport, really.
But similar.
No, not.
No, no.
I'm going to be honest with you.
I can't see a similarity between Kay Adams and Patrick.
Not at all.
I'm not really thinking the same way.
It's different.
They both don't wear sleeves.
It's different zones.
Different chromosomes, you mean?
It's different zones, but different sides of my personality are able to be unlocked on both.
Okay.
That makes sense.
Which side is unlocked with Kay?
What are you trying to say?
We got to flip it on.
You got to go on the offense.
You got to flip it on.
You got to help me.
You guys don't like this girl a lot.
You guys have like a crush on her or something?
Yeah, you got to crush on this white woman.
No, dude.
I'm listening to the white tongue.
Damn, you got a ring on her.
I'm very strong.
I've never had that milk in my life, but some of these girls is ice cream.
He is a schoolman.
I'm not involved in this.
I'm not involved in this.
I'm not the whole school, bro.
You're not.
As far as I know, I don't see the ring.
Starts.
What's your favorite?
So you stick with ice cream.
Brown girls.
I'm a brown man, but I just objectively noticed that you can't call some of them milk.
They transcend that.
They transcend it.
The vanilla scoops.
The vanilla scoops.
Yeah.
But I'm going to turn that shit into a scoop.
You could be the caramel topic.
Which is not true.
I got nothing there, but she's a great friend, great person.
I think we have, when we were working together, made great TV.
Yeah.
It's fun.
Well, that's good, man.
I look forward to more of that in the future.
Yeah, it'll be fun.
Yeah, it would definitely be fun.
Jokes aside, wasn't that weird seeing the internet take that whole thing?
It was like a thing for like a couple of months.
Yeah, I mean, people love good TV.
I would say people love great TV.
That one even got you.
I know.
I'm saying people love great TV.
I think they both love a couple of you guys.
They created a romantic connection that obviously was never there.
What was it?
It was not a sham God.
It was somebody.
His sham.
The Riz.
This RizMaster, some shit like that.
You know what he's talking about.
Yeah, what was the nickname?
What was the moniker they gave me?
That's what the people said.
Yeah, what did the people say?
Our guy's going to find that.
It's horrible as Google.
You're just going to have to say that.
Yeah, that's good.
Riz God, Riz God.
People would call you that.
That's crazy.
A Riz God.
For no reason.
People that know me, like, I don't really have, you know, I don't have a game like that.
That's what every Riz God says.
I Riz God.
How's my move too?
Like, damn, I don't got to go game.
I'm honestly like, I'm a shy person.
You're just shy.
Big dick.
I'm like, I'm like a cost over here.
No, no, you're not.
No, I ain't big dick.
I'm married.
Well, I'll try to be where you're at, man.
Married.
I'm trying to get your risk to right now.
Set it up.
This little scoop ice cream.
You're stuck on the vanilla, man.
We're talking about Sundays over here.
I'm not.
I would love.
If you got with a brown girl, I'll be so happy.
We need watch Sundays because it got a banana in it.
Hey, if you came with a brown woman, I'd be very thrilled.
I'll try to set you up with one.
What are you looking for?
You want a smiley girl?
Is that important to you?
Man, listen, right now, work is important to me.
I like that.
You gotta focus on work.
Let me call your mom.
We'll set this shit up real quick.
Real quick because I'm tired of your politicking.
Don't you focus.
Doesn't your mom want you to get meet a nice lady?
I mean, my mom wants me to focus on work.
Oh, no, she doesn't.
You're 31.
Don't lie to me.
No, man.
No, but because this is the thing, when you're around your family, they see what this is like more than anyone.
And so they know how much I care for it, my passion for it, the time.
And I think, you know, growing up, it was like, all right, if you know, doctor, lawyer, accountant, anything in the medical field, that would be amazing.
But once I found this and my mom knows how passionate I am about it, she's like, spend all the time you want on this and like make it your number one.
Let me tell you why I know you're lying.
This is a personal story.
Facts.
My mom went to the hospital.
She had to get like a neuro scan or something.
I'm freaking out.
I'm in New York.
I'm doing something, filming something.
I can't get back to see her.
I start crying on the phone with her.
I'm like, I need you in my life.
I can't lose you.
I'm 31 years old, exactly as old as you are right now.
And she goes, oh, God, get a girlfriend.
That's what she said to me.
She was like, I'm not, shut up.
She was like, stop wasting everybody's time.
So I know brown mops.
Your mom is not like, hey, you're 31.
Stay focused on your career.
She's like, give me a grand baby.
Sometimes, but most of the time, it's focused on the job.
I like that.
Have you ever gotten information from a wife or a girlfriend or an ex-girlfriend?
Oh, and you handsome?
Luka Doncic Trade Reasons00:09:57
They're probably giving it up.
A side chick upset.
No, a side chick that's upset.
I mean, listen, I'll just say every area, every domain you could think of.
That's a yes.
You've been hunting pots.
Any domain you can think of.
I have probably gotten information from any domain you can think of.
Did you stuff dick?
Jesus.
No, you can't ask that one.
Hold on.
No, because he can't see it.
No, because that's not illegal.
That's not information.
That's not illegal.
That's illegal.
That's so professional.
That's not illegal.
It's not illegal to do that.
Because you want all an American stuff Kobe and Melissa did.
But in all seriousness, that's not illegal if they were going to do that.
If they were trying to bribe you with that.
I apologize for you.
No, Any domain you can pick up.
You can't ask that, bro.
What's wrong with you guys?
For real.
Did a girl tell the hot pocket?
What does that mean?
The hot pocket.
For what?
What are you?
Come on, you know what?
What is a hot pocket?
The hot pocket.
In this context, I'm trying to understand.
You're coming to do this.
A girl wants you to put a story out about a player that she really just doesn't like, you know, because maybe they had like an amazing few sexual intercourses.
But why is that a story for me?
But she's like, I want you to say that he's a bad guy.
And you're like, that's not a story.
Yeah, you say that.
Why is that a story for me?
And then she's like, well, how do I make it a story for you?
Maybe she told him or he told her he's disgruntled with his team.
He wants out.
He's beefing with his teammate.
And she wants to give him a hundred.
If that were to happen, now that's what we call a tip to a story, potentially.
Now, did you give her a tip?
No, no, no.
I just set him up for that.
Can I be honest with you?
I'm on the opposite end of this.
There's nothing you'd say that he can't flip.
Yeah, he's like a jiu-jitsu master of sexual engagement.
All right, what about all the Achilles injuries?
That's a lot.
That's a lot of Achilles injuries.
What do we think?
I think NBA is doing a report about that.
Looking into...
So we have Jason Tatum, Damian Lillard, Tyrese Halliburton, and the Kyrie Irving is ACL, but he's going to be out your Mavericks.
He's going to miss some time to go here.
How does Nico Harrison still have a fucking job?
Please explain this to me.
And how upset?
You know, the city of Dallas was.
I mean, he broke the news.
I'm well.
You broke the team.
Yeah, you broke the news.
I truly believe it.
If have your producer.
Here's a fun exercise for you guys.
Have the producer pull up that tweet.
Pull up that tweet.
He's not going to.
That's just the exercise.
See if you can pull it.
I want you to see.
It's still jarring to me how much, like I knew it was a big deal when it happened, but how big it became like people outside of Dallas don't understand how much we loved Luca.
We didn't need him to win yet.
We were like, we'll take time because we worked out with Dirk and we felt like we got it again and it was awesome.
So trading him, truly, they would have lost the team if they didn't get Cooper Flag.
I truly believe the lottery was raked for that reason because the Mavs would have left.
110.7 million views.
Damn.
How long did you have this information before you seven minutes?
You got seven minutes to confirm that it was true.
Five different sources.
So I got a heads up.
Yep.
First heads up.
Maxi Cleb.
First heads up.
Mark Keith Morris is being traded to the Lakers.
Second heads up.
Markie Morris being trade Lakers.
Second heads up.
Maxi Kleber being traded to Lakers.
I'm like, what is going on?
Then I get another source.
Three-team deal.
Lakers, Mavs, Jazz.
Jalen Huchofino is going to Utah.
I'm like, what is this three-team deal?
These are a bunch of guys that are on contracts that are like, are they just trading small salaries for small salaries?
And then the fourth person tells me, Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis, these are all the parts.
Fifth person.
The whole deal.
I got the whole deal.
And I'm like, am I being catfished right now?
That's what I'm trying to do.
Is this person's phone hack?
I got to call this person.
Call them.
Hear their voice.
It's real.
I'm like, holy.
And like, my hands are literally shaking.
I'm like, sweaty.
Mind you, the context of this, it's like 11 Central Time.
I'm in Chicago.
The Lakers had just beaten the Knicks by a lot in New York at the garden on a Saturday night.
My hair was all down.
I had my glasses on.
I was getting ready to shut it down for the night.
And I'm just like, my hands are trembling.
Like, I'm just like, this is unbelievable.
I called the fifth person.
Actually, I called someone else.
The phone didn't even ring.
It wouldn't even go.
So I'm like, this person's definitely dealing with this, right?
I call them, I call another person.
The person picks up.
I'm like, there's no way this shit is fucking real.
And the person goes, yeah, it's real.
Next thing you know, that's that.
The seven minutes.
Whoa.
The fourth person that you get on the phone and actually hear it from.
Are you convinced by them in that moment?
Yeah.
Okay.
So I know they're not.
They're not.
There's nothing I tell you.
And there's no, and again, I'm not asking sources, but like they've never led you astray in the past.
No.
This is someone that you can trust.
Yes.
Because if you go out with this and then it ends up not happening, I'm sure you're considering how that makes you look.
Is that why your hand is trembling?
Yeah, about everything.
It's that.
It's, is this all accurate?
Making sure it's all accurate.
And then this is something like very minor on the like getting like I have no typo in this.
I just, I like, it's like the, I think it's the probably my most perfect tweet because I made sure this is the one tweet you can't have a typo in.
Like you can't get a detail wrong.
You can't have first, you know, 2029 first round pick, but it's really 2026 first round pick.
Yeah.
Like every detail has to be right because you know it's going to be a big deal.
And I didn't think it would be this.
Oh god, I'm getting PTSD looking at this.
Look at I'm sorry for doing that.
Look at the first reply.
Nico fucking loser.
Bro, I had to check 10 times to see if this was a real account.
Yeah, my phone blew up because everyone thought I got hacked or it was fake or that my safety was under concern.
So my phone was blowing up.
My phone, I never had that many calls.
And it's one of those things where it's like continuous calls, right?
So are you answering any or do you just shut it down?
I answered like five people.
One was like the late night sports center guy because I'm like, I know, I know why he, you know, he wants to make sure it's real.
He wants to make sure it's real so we can cover it.
A couple other people.
I think I picked up Stephen A's call, Pat McAlee's call, two other people.
And then, yeah, that night was wild.
Do you sleep?
Sorry, sorry.
Do you sleep at all?
That's not like one and a half hours.
Okay, so you stay up throughout the night.
I stayed up till like I had a sports center hit at like six in the morning.
I think I slept at like four, got up at like 5:15, did my sports center hit, and the day was on and popping.
What's funny is I had a 7 a.m. flight to Bristol for the trade deadline.
I'm like, all right, I'm going to be covering Jimmy Butler, De'Aaron Fox getting traded this week.
And yeah, I need to know how this happened as a fucking.
What's going on?
What's with Nico?
Why does he do this?
It can't possibly be.
He thought this made them a better team.
It cannot possibly be.
He genuinely believed that Anthony Davis, who we call street clothes as a nickname, was a better championship fit, better for their culture and defense.
Like again, this is in real time back then.
This is what he believed.
Now, he might still believe this.
I don't think anyone's gone up and asked, do you still believe this?
But as of, you know, even training camp, this is what they believed.
Anthony Davis being a better fit to a championship quality team than Luka Doncic and whatever concerns they had about Luca.
So you go out and make this trade.
Now, again, on face, you know, Anthony Davis above 30.
You have Luka Doncic, who at the time of the trade, 25, all NBA for four, five straight in sports history.
Anthony Davis is, you know, Anthony Davis, top 75 player.
He's an all-all-NBA all-star.
He's a Hall of Fame player in his own right.
Luca Doncic is obviously Luka Doncic.
I can barely watch sports anymore.
I hear that exactly.
I hear that from people in Dallas.
I hear that a lot from people in Dallas.
But how does Nico Harrison?
I think your question was, how does Nico Harris not have a job?
I mean, the reality is the roster he's built when healthy.
The Mavs, Nico Harrison, that ownership, Patrick Dumont, the new owner, there, they believe it's a championship quality roster if they stay healthy.
And if I gross that, I think it was a good trade.
See, it's not my place to say whether it was a right or wrong trade.
I, I, even when it happened, I saw why Dallas did it.
Again, does that justify it?
Now, if you're asking me, do the vast majority of people I speak to.
No, I'm saying, do you think it's a good trade?
I mean, for it's not on me to decide.
That's not my opinion.
Your opinion.
Your opinion.
What do you think?
I think on face, of course, when you trade a guy like Luka Doncic, I just look at it from a position of he's 25 years old.
I mean, you can for the next 10 years.
You can build around him.
But again, time will tell on this.
Is that because you're a journalist?
You're not really...
You don't want to say that.
It's not my place, but it's also like my job is to take perspectives and information, insight, and present it in the most responsible and fair way.
Like Nico Harrison and the Mavericks had their reasons, even at an ownership level.
They had their reasons to make this trade.
They felt it was going to lead them to a championship.
But again, the Lakers, since this trade, they lost in the first round.
The Mavericks, they lost in the first round, right?
No, they didn't make it.
They lost in the play-in tournament.
Building Around Young Stars00:05:22
Yeah.
So they lost in the player tournament.
So I'm not saying neither side has we don't know what's happened, but the goal is to win a championship, right?
So I'm just saying like this: let's say the Mavericks this year and next year win a championship and the Lakers don't.
So are we going to say this trade was a success?
Yeah, this year, sure.
We can speak in impossibilities all we want to.
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Now let's get back to the show.
Who do you think is the next NBA superstar to get traded?
Because Giannis, I thought, would be the one, but he's at like 99% on college.
He's staying in Milwaukee.
So I just checked that a little bit just to see because I just want somebody to share my misery.
Yeah, I think the next guy to keep, I mean, the next couple guys to keep an eye on probably are Giannis still.
I think you have to monitor that situation.
Big win for them against the Knicks, your Knicks.
There was like a two-week period.
What was that?
I know, yeah.
What was that?
Your Knicks.
I mean, your Knicks.
But why did you say it like that?
Because they got...
Did you see the score last night?
Well, why are we even talking about old shit?
I said it happened 24 hours ago.
I'm just saying.
It was in a way in a future way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We won the guard and we took everything.
Yeah, there was other things going on.
We have to give them a false sense of security.
Who won?
What was it?
There was a two-week period where the Knicks knew that Giannis and DeCoupo wanted to play there.
How did the Knicks?
How did the Knicks fuck that up?
Wow.
How do we first do that two-week period where they knew they had conversations?
Offers were made.
What did we have to offer?
What did they want?
Did they want JB?
No.
You probably want the...
I don't even think it got to a point.
I think it's like, make the best offers you have.
And what did they offer?
Offers were made.
Can you tell us what they noticed?
It's not out there in the world?
Bridges?
Can you give me an allegedly?
Bridges was not eligible to be traded at the time because it's on the extension.
Bridges would be.
If they want to run that bag, Bridges would be a piece.
Okay, can you angle your mic up towards you?
Sorry.
Cat was offered.
I think you have to keep it on Giannis still.
I think the first 20, 25 games, I mean, they're off to a great start.
I think they're 3-in-1 Milwaukee is.
We'll see how they do this year, how they do in the playoffs.
Next year, he's going to be entering the last year of their deal, of his deal.
And in the NBA, everyone knows that's the point you have the most leverage.
So how far they go, how far they don't go, that could impact where he's at.
And potentially 20, 25 games in.
We'll see.
I mean, right now they're off to a great start, as we see right there.
Who's got the shit out of the Knicks last year?
Fuck you.
Who's got the best scoops?
Which player, active player, has the most information?
Meaning, like other players confide in them and they're just a source for everything.
They really know what's going on in the league.
Who is that?
I don't know.
Who's the you in the league?
I don't know.
Man, get out of here.
I don't know.
I don't.
You won't say.
Player Confidences Exposed00:15:43
I don't talk to whoever that is.
I need to find out.
That's a good question.
I got to get on that hunt.
What's the craziest place you've ever had to step out of in order to post something or get somebody?
I've been everywhere.
You ever been to like a funeral?
Been at like your mom's birthday?
Something crazy where you're like, hey, this is a bad look, but I need to take this.
Yeah, I mean, that's...
Yeah, funeral will be tough.
Funeral will be tough.
No, you would step out.
He ain't going to be more dead.
I would step out for just about anything.
But have you?
Have you had to step in?
I think religious gatherings, I would say definitely birthdays, family birthdays.
What about a date?
All the time.
But let's say you're hanging out with family or you're hanging out with a girl you might be seeing or whatever.
There are always going to be moments where you might have to step out for a call or whatever.
And is that person understanding?
Have you had a girl that's not understanding it about it?
I think people in life, you've run into friends that aren't understanding.
But that's why maybe dating somebody that's also involved in sports might be good because they would understand your priorities and what you do for a living better than people outside of it.
Something you guys can talk about at work.
It's possible.
Never know.
Have you ever had to stop mid-session?
Oh, my God.
You have to pull your thing out.
Post a tweet because that's dedication of the game.
That is dedication to the game.
I'll just say this.
I've had to step out of the shower plenty times.
With whom?
I've had to pause workouts.
All kinds of workouts.
I've had to pause.
His biceps.
Triceps.
Bumbar.
Like, class was the toughest for me, though.
Like, when I went to, that was the hardest part.
You know, you, the example you gave, and the other examples I gave, like, those are, they're tough to do.
Like, if you're at your mom's birthday or sister's birthday, like, you don't want to leave, you know, during the celebration.
They're blowing out the candles of the cake and you're having to step out because you have to take a call like about a buyout of a player.
Like, you think about that in Grand Scheme, like, that's tough.
But class was the worst.
Like, when I was, when I had to, when I was in college, I would literally leave classes, like 40-minute classes, and I'm leaving for like 30 minutes, 35 minutes.
And I'm coming back at the end of class, and the teacher's looking at me because at the time, she didn't know what I was doing.
They don't, no one knows.
Everyone probably looked at me like I was insane.
What is this guy doing?
Is this guy just weird?
He must have issues.
Or must have issues.
Or he's on his way to greatness.
Which referee is the most corrupt?
If you had to guess, which one would you point to?
Whatever ref was doing the one, the game that you were playing against Jay, that's the ref that shows.
That's the ref that was going to be.
And he's let Jay get away with the taunting.
He let Jay get away with it.
No, no, no.
He let Jay follow you too much.
I agree.
Like, I think the fact that it got to 6'6 was an issue.
Yeah.
You weren't getting the right calls.
Yeah.
You weren't getting the rights.
I wasn't getting any calls.
You should have gone the line.
I should have gone, dude.
I 100% believe that.
I think that you're right.
Do you want to play over-under on his screen time?
Yes.
Oh, we got to do that.
Did I answer your Nico question?
I'm not saying it's right or wrong.
Because listen, I get that from Dallas people.
There's a video that people were upset about where some guy saw Nico out to dinner with his family.
He goes, Nico shakes his hand.
He goes, Everybody still fucking hates you.
And then walks off.
And people were like, How could you do that to a guy who's at dinner with his?
And everybody from Dallas is like, do that shit again.
Do that shit again and again.
You can't go anywhere, apparently.
Fuck that guy, yo.
And what about them getting the lotto pick?
Well, I think that was rigged.
He'll never admit it, but I truly think they were going to lose Dallas.
Was that rigged?
Yeah.
Was that rigged?
Can we do that?
It's so hard to rig.
I've seen it.
I know what I know how it's.
That doesn't mean it's impossible.
Yeah, that wouldn't.
It's not.
That wasn't a full sentence.
All right.
What about Kawhi?
What about Kawhi?
What's up with Kawhi?
Oh, that's fun.
What's up with Kawhi and his uncle?
It was last week.
Damn.
God damn.
How many hours?
No, Oh, yes.
I saw.
That's crazy.
12 is my guess.
That's crazy.
16 and a half.
10 of them are just on Snapchat.
Oh, crazy.
Yeah, who you snap.
No way.
Not even lying.
I was like, wait, is that actually?
Hold on, let's go to.
Kawhi.
Give us the real about Kawhi.
Hold on.
I'll give you this.
I'll give you this.
All right.
What do you got?
Let's go.
Let's go the two-day span of the arrests.
Can you guess what the screen time was for those?
This is over two days.
Wednesday and Thursday.
I mean, I saw, like, I think it has to be.
If he's pushing 16 on a regular, that's what I'm saying.
It has to be 40 hours.
Yeah, it's 40 hours, my guess.
It has to be 40 per day.
Per day, 20 hours.
Oh, 20.
20.
It's actually less.
Wednesday?
17 hours and 50.
That's a light day.
That's not a lot of fun.
Thursday was a wild day.
So this is Thursday.
Yeah, he really might be focusing on work.
18 and a half.
Yeah.
No, but how do you focus on life?
Like, yeah.
See, see, not now, now you guys understand.
You guys are asking all these dating questions.
It's not about that.
It's not about this.
It's about the work.
It's about the acronym.
Talk about dating.
Talking about dating.
Dating.
Dating.
He's talking about mid-session.
Come on, man.
Yeah, you know what I mean?
That was thinking about, bro.
Okay, tell us about it.
So, Kawhi Leonard.
What do you guys want to know?
I want to know if he's asking for a little extra on top.
I want to know if the Unk is saying, listen, we know what the salary cap says.
You know, we can be paid, but we need a little more than that.
So that's their allegations that that's what his camp has asked for.
And that's been like, you know, there's always these things that circulate in the NBA community.
Yeah.
And it's on my job.
Can I confirm it?
Is there something like that is so nebulous because someone could mention it to someone?
Yeah.
But, you know, I can, you know, someone can mention, you know, like a player can mention to a team, like, hey, like, we need this to sign with you.
But if the team says, no, we're not doing that.
And if the player signs there anyway, like, what's the story that this guy made the request?
Sometimes it leaks, sometimes it doesn't.
Didn't he?
Go on, go on.
So my point is, there's, it's been in the nebulous for a while that, like, you know, if Kawhi Leonard is a free agent in 2019, is going to sign with you.
There's going to be these requests.
The NBA did its own investigation.
They found nothing.
It's never been, never been, no way.
It's never been on the record.
There's nothing been something for him, but it's been in the space for a while.
So there's there are, you know, there's a reporting that came out that he had a deal with Aspiration, this company called Aspiration.
That was also a sponsor of the Clippers at the time.
The owner had invested in that company as well.
And there was a side deal with Kawhi Leonard to be sponsored by the company.
To be sponsored by the company, but that's there's nothing like legally that's within your like that's fine.
So there are deals that happen between companies and teams and their players.
So the owner of a team can also own, let's say, Adidas and then choose to have one of their athletes or one of their players be sponsored by Adidas.
Well, they're not choosing.
That company is choosing it, technically, right?
What if the owner is invested in that company?
Well, that's the thing.
That's the line that the NBA.
So now the NBA is investigating all this.
And is it even a real company?
Didn't it like file for bankruptcy?
That's what I'm saying.
So there's a lot of, I mean, I don't have to, I mean, I don't have to hide it.
There's a lot of shady things, a lot of corrupt things that happened with this company.
So now the league, so there's a lot of circumstantial stuff, right?
Like, you know, there's going to be money that's put into the company, then the money might go, you know, at the same period.
But again, if companies are paying and doing things bi-weekly, and it just so happened they got money, you know, but overall, Steve Ballmer put in $131 million into this company.
This company put in X amount of money into the Clippers.
Kawhi Leonard, I think, saw between 10 and 20 million dollars out of a $28 million deal.
So if one plus one is supposed to equal two, in this situation, Steve Ballmer put in $131 million.
Kawhi Leonard saw 10 to 20 million of that.
So are those both correlated?
Like, are they both tied together?
That's what the NBA has to figure out.
Is there hard evidence?
Is there or circumstantial evidence or is all of this combined?
Is there a lack of transparency issues or a lack of moral issue?
I think that's all what the league is determining right now.
And that investigation started about a month ago.
So they're going to be going through all these guys' emails, text messages, all their files.
That's the people that got in trouble already that are bankrupt.
Steve Ballmer, Kawhi Leonard, his uncle, his entire camp.
Is there precedent for this of what would happen, possibly like Ballmer or Kawhi?
So if the allegation is cap circumvention, I mean, it's suspension for ownership.
You can void contracts.
You know, you can void.
So this happened with Joe Smith.
Yeah.
Timber Wolves.
Yes, yes, yes.
Glenn Taylor was suspended.
Kevin McHill, the GM was suspended.
They lost five first-round graphics, right?
They lost a ton of first-round picks.
Joe Smith's contract got voided.
And so, yeah, that's all potentially on the table, right?
But with that situation, there was a paper trail.
There was a signed sheet of, I think it was like on a paper towel or something.
It was like a napkin that they wrote the contract.
Like, you know, after this, you know, we're going to give you this max contract or whatever.
Here, so far, there has not been proof of a paper trail.
It's not like Steve Ballmer.
There's proof of Steve Ballmer, someone with the Clippers saying, hey, sign Kawhi Leonard to this deal.
This is what they have to do.
The Clippers are alleging that this was all in the up and up.
Like we also got defrauded.
Like Steve believed in them.
He invested in them.
They invested in the Clippers.
They were on our jersey patch.
They asked to be connected to Kawhi Leonard and we connected them to Kawhi Leonard.
That happens throughout the league.
Sponsors of teams ask for players all the time.
Yeah.
That makes sense.
All the time.
And so we'll see if there's going to be enough of a paper trail.
I mean, putting in a buck 30 and then just getting rinsed for it just seems peculiar.
Like this is a good businessman.
You know?
That's a big investment.
That's a lot of money to give to Kawhi off $130 million.
Yeah.
That's a lot of money.
That's a lot of money.
Is that washing money?
Like, I don't know what, like, what is that?
That's the thing that just seems so odd about it.
Like, to give Kawhi 20, you got to spend $110.
But does that sound right to you?
I don't know.
It doesn't.
It doesn't at all.
But it also, I don't feel like somebody like that would make that silly a business decision.
Yeah.
And again, he's come out and he said, like, I got like, I got frauded.
Like, I got scammed.
Like, I was, I was a part of getting, you know, defrauded out of my money.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
And you said these types of deals are common.
Is this just a common way of getting around the salary cap?
No, I mean, I said in this situation, it's common hearing that like, you know, people around Kawhi Leonard might have asked for this.
It's been in the nebulous for a while.
You know, obviously the NBA investigated, they didn't find anything.
It's not like they're going to come out and say, yeah, we asked for this from all these teams from Toronto, Lakers, the Clippers.
Like this type of stuff, like getting stuff on the, on the books, like we're going to pay this guy on a side deal.
I think there's so much to lose.
I don't hear about that as much.
Now, the stuff that does happen a lot is like a player will get a sponsorship deal with the same sponsor of a team.
Yeah.
Right.
And like Mark Cuban.
I talked to Mark Cuban all the time.
Yeah, he was defending Ballmer.
And Mark Cuban told me there's been a lot of moments where like when he was at his peak as an owner of popularity, like these companies would come to him and be like, hey, can we talk to this player?
Can we talk to that player?
And he will basically help set that up.
And so is that like, but that's legal.
So in this case, if this company aspiration went to the Clippers, said, we want to meet with Kawhi Leonard and all they did was give the contact information.
Now, again, is there paper trail where there was something more nefarious going on?
That's what the NBA investigations trying to find out.
But that's, I mean, there's so much at risk for these teams if they were to venture at that realm.
That's the cardinal sin of the NBA.
Back to the gambling scandal.
Do you think, because I don't think you can like undo what has been done unless you just take away prop betting, which I don't think the casino companies are going to take away.
Do you think people lose faith in the game and stop watching?
Like, do you think it can actually hurt the league?
I mean, I think the integrity of the league is very important.
And if this becomes more wide-ranging, like if there's all these dots across the U.S. map where this is all popping up with this player, of course, it becomes a major issue.
But right now, we've seen two examples of it.
You know, one, the jury's still out.
You know, he has Terry Rozier has not gone through his trial yet.
We don't know his, you know, what he's going to be charged with.
But I think the integrity concern is real, like right now.
And I think the league knows it.
I think they even said in their release, like this is a, this is, this is a dire state, you know, like trying to get to the bottom of how can they regulate legalized gambling.
Yeah, they got to figure something out.
They got to figure something out with that.
Because it just feels so easy.
I just feel like you can't fix that.
No way to fix that with that.
I mean, again, unless you're getting rid of these prop bets, unless you're finding a way to tier system it, unless you're trying to get more, unless you're able to get more information accessible to the fans and the betting public.
Do you think there's a publicity to this so that other players stop doing this?
Or just do it smarter.
Yeah.
I mean, I think the FBI doing it when they did it on opening week, I think that alone raised enough alarms to not only the league, but fans and just the sports world in general that like raising this, the awareness of what this is, I think the timing of when that happened, I think that alone raises the awareness.
I mean, this is in the hands of the feds at this point.
This is not this, like this situation that's going on right now, this is not even in the NBA's hands per se.
I mean, and this must be happening in other leagues too.
Like, I'm sure this is a shockwave to everyone.
The NFL, there's been multiple players that have gotten suspended.
So what the NFL does is they suspend players for, I believe it's a dozen, maybe you can pull it up.
I think it's like a dozen, it's like half a dozen games.
Players are getting suspended.
Now in the NBA, if you're caught in these activities, you're just banned.
John Tay Porter was banned.
Now, if Rozier is found guilty in this, he's going to be banned.
Obviously, there's a lot of other things with him and John Tay Porter.
But the NFL has had a few of these scandals and it's been a suspension.
It's so weird that you would just suspend.
Yeah.
Like maybe one player in the NFL just has a six game, two minimum of six games to do indefinite bans.
Oh, yeah, Jameson Williams.
Breaking News On Suspensions00:14:22
I forgot about that.
So do you think the number of people that are implicated in this at the present moment will stay that number?
Or do you think it'll increase in the coming weeks?
I think that the fact that we already went from five people initially to now 30 plus in the span of a year and a half.
Yeah.
We have one more current player.
We have...
Now, again, these two situations, they're two different cases, right?
One's illegal gambling, illegal, yeah, one's an illegal gambling insider information case.
The other is an illegal poker rigging case.
Now, I think we're going to get potentially more names in both, but the fact that it's already gone up six, I mean, it multiplied by six times in the span of a year and a half.
Now you have 30 more people.
How many more of these people are going to cooperate?
And our boy got to really distract from the fact that he's not doing anything on Epstein.
So he's going to drag this into the investigation.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Cash, we're saying.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I, yeah, that's an interesting situation.
I got a lot of tweets at me that day saying, why don't you release the list, the other list?
Do you know who's on that one?
I don't have.
I think they think you're cash for champion.
You can probably figure it out, though.
You probably get that list.
Do you ever get insider shit about non-NBA stuff?
I've gotten, oh, here we go.
We got something.
What do we got?
Oh, wow.
Oh, did you leak that?
You were the first one?
I mean, I don't know.
Is that what the people say?
I just know where I was when this happened.
I was in the bubble.
So you dropped that?
I mean, it says that.
Yeah.
Hold on, second.
But are you, you don't reveal your sources with the NBA and that kind of stuff.
But other rumors.
Yeah.
Like, can you?
I would just say that year was an interesting year because sports and politics, society, justice, health, it all intertwined.
And like, there were, there were all these boards, sports board, and this commission.
Yeah.
And that was the most I think I've like delved into like the political world and like trying to reach out and email people and reach out to people.
And so the way that you have sports media and like your role in it, does it affect how you see other media?
Like looking at just like political news and stuff like that?
No, I mean, I watch from afar.
Like I'll watch everything from afar, see how like, you know, see how this person is reporting that.
Like what's their methodology when they're trying to report this story?
Again, you can't, not everything is apples, apples, right?
It's like different in that, in that world.
But I definitely pay attention to how they're sourcing it, how they're going about reporting it.
You know, are they breaking it?
Are people breaking it?
Or are they just like, you know, just doing it when these people say it, say it publicly?
Right.
You know, like if when there's an announcement publicly.
Yeah, then you're not breaking anything.
You're just kind of retweeting.
So I'm like, definitely like, just a competitor in me is like, oh, did this person break this?
And I'm like, you know, as if I'm going to like.
The break is where you get off.
Has there ever been a story that you got that you sat on because you weren't sure and then someone else broke it and you were like, oh man, I should have pulled trigger on it.
Yeah, I mean, that happens.
That happens all the time.
Can you?
Honestly, it's probably happened so much in the past, I don't even remember it.
Is there a big one, like a big one where you were trying to confirm it and all of a sudden you saw it got posted?
I'd have to think.
Think about some of the biggest deals the last like 10 years and I'll tell you.
LeBron going to Cleveland after leaving Miami.
That was announced.
He announced that on SI.
But people were saying that day he's going to go to... Cleveland?
Yeah.
I mean, I feel like I've been on a lot of it.
I feel like I've been on a lot of it.
I'll give you an example of one that like, you know, things that eat at me is like if I'm on a family trip and the like 20 minutes I'm spending not on my phone or if I'm, you know, let's say I'm at a dinner and I'm not on my phone or I'm in the water and I'm not on my phone and I miss news and that has happened before.
What'd you miss?
I don't know if I want to say it.
Just say it.
It's already out there.
It's already happened.
Statue limitation.
Yeah, it's been enough time.
Yeah.
So Taylor Jenkins, coach of the Grizzlies, got fired.
Okay.
I was on a family trip, was away from my phone for lunch.
And I think we were gone for like five, six days.
And the 20 minutes I wasn't on my phone.
You can miss that one, dude.
Yeah.
It was a big deal.
There was three weeks left in the season.
A coach getting fired that late in the year.
To me, it's all a big deal.
If it's big news, small, like you got to treat everything with the same amount of, you know, if you're performing in Times Square or you're performing at the comedy club.
Shout out Tommy Invincible, bro.
Same thing.
Every show is the same thing.
Same thing.
Even the way he's describing it really shows his commitment to it.
Yeah.
Because that's not the way I thought you were going to go.
Sometimes you go on a family trip, man, and it eats me up that I missed a scoop.
I was like, that's not what I thought you were going to say.
You're going to talk about the family party.
What's up?
Why can't John do the gun stuff, man?
What's up with that?
And the celebration?
Yeah, like we used to be a country.
Yeah.
The grenade one's fire.
His grenade is fire.
I mean, he's not getting control for that.
Okay, good.
Yeah.
Because I like that.
I think they have it in the video game, too.
I think they have that in 2K.
Just, yeah, they have that in 2K.
That's fire.
Yeah.
We like guns in America.
Why is it such a big deal?
Yeah.
I'm a gun on it.
I think with him, it seems like it's the history, but it seems like he's in a great place.
What is the history?
Yeah, didn't he beat up like a 14-year-old pickup with him?
There were a couple moments he got.
This is a couple years ago now.
Flashing a gun.
Allegedly.
Yeah, flashing the gun at the opposing team bust.
Is that illegal to flash a gun?
Is it illegal to do that?
Yeah.
To brandish it?
Yep.
You knew the legal jossing.
Why did you knew the legal game?
That one's called like garnishing.
No, but like you can't.
Oh, yeah.
Look, I knew it was in the street.
It was right off the dome.
Yeah.
Fire, bro.
That's great.
That's why he stole it from exactly.
Hold on.
So, wait a minute.
He can't even just post that he has guns on Instagram.
I don't think that would be something that he would do right now.
I don't think so.
What if he got a deal with Smith and Wessman and he was like a sponsored athlete by Smith and Wesson?
Would you advise him to do that?
I mean, it depends the bag.
No.
No?
250 million he's got with the Greenslings.
What do you think?
So he's good.
Yeah.
So he's good.
He's real good.
So then, yeah, get out there.
Start bucking.
I'm in defense of an American, a free American that has the right to, you know, show the shit that he has right to flex.
That's exactly what I'm saying.
Why can't you garnish?
Why can't you brandish?
Why can't you do all that?
I don't understand why that's bad.
It makes the league look bad.
They're a bunch of gambling degenerates getting paid off by the Italian mob.
And this guy can't point a pistol in the air when a stripper's not dancing fast enough.
She was dancing slow.
I mean, that goes that I don't know.
Did they have it in the bubble?
I don't know.
Bring it all the way back.
Wait, Michael Jordan.
Did he get suspended for gambling?
Oh, great.
This story, I was one years old when he retired.
Yeah, that's a Chicago boy.
You got 74.
No, he retired in 94, right?
94, 94.
No, I think, yeah, 93.
94.
Yeah, 93, 94.
Yeah.
Yeah, you get the scoops, man.
We want to know.
I just know the vertical whatever.
If there is an alternative version of the story, I don't have that.
So, so, so David Stern wasn't trying to, you know, impose some punitive measures.
Now, listen, if I worked back then, if I was, let's say, we flipped the years, I would have given you guys you would have known.
Yeah.
And you would have dropped it.
But you think you would have got frozen out like Sports Illustrated did?
If I had it, confirmed, I would have dropped it.
But then, what if MJ never gave you anything again after that?
I'm going to have to do my job.
Let me ask you a question.
When Charles Barkley kissed that referee on the mouth, why didn't you leak that?
What was that?
That was like 2007?
Yeah.
I wasn't doing it.
You weren't in the game.
20 years ago.
But if you were in the game, would you have leaked like today there will be a sexual action?
Would you have leaked?
I think that was an endearing moment.
That was a heartwarming moment.
It was adorable.
Charles is the go.
Charles is the goat.
You got the end of the game.
I thought Jimmy was the dream guest.
Jimmy's also a dream guy.
I'm going to be dream guest.
Probably Barack and Charles Barkley for me.
I'm talking about it.
To me, it's Charles.
Yeah.
To me, is Charles number one.
And Shad.
Shadi Cole.
I played.
Talks that shit, though.
That's the thing.
He got opinions on everything.
Funny, funny.
Got that southern draw, so everything comes out smooth.
What era would you want to cover in if it couldn't be right now?
Ooh, that's a good question.
Ooh.
I mean, you always think about the 90s, but I'm right when they let black people in.
That would have been tried.
I feel like right now, right now is the best time.
You think they'd have let him cover shit?
Right now is the best time.
Nah, they probably wouldn't have given you any of this.
Any questions?
But that would have been scoops for days.
I think right now is the best time.
Yeah, because of access to media and like you have so much more power as an individual, whereas before, as a reporter, they could probably leverage yourself.
I was on the media back then.
Exactly.
Sure, I got no notice because you would have had a newspaper or something.
That game's about to get so much better.
Yeah, it's just a two-day wait for news.
Like waiting 24 hours.
Can't do it.
Anyway, my boy, can you give us one thing before you leave?
Give us what drop just one thing.
I need one school.
You can give us a look at.
Giannis.
Okay.
Trey Young.
I think keep an eye on them.
Trey?
Keep an eye on him.
Is Trey coming to New York?
No.
Trey didn't extend his contract in the offseason because he's got one year left.
He's a free agent next summer.
Okay.
And he can hit free agency potentially if he opts out.
Where do you think Trey's going?
I mean, he could stay in Atlanta, but he's going to have a market.
Oh, yeah.
You're talking about Trey Young here.
Yeah.
So Giannis, Trey Young, and then as the season goes on, there's always guys that'll pop up.
And we still don't know where LeBron James is going to be.
Is he going to finish his career with the Lakers or is he going to be somewhere else?
I think it's very much up in the middle.
Do you think he would change teams?
I mean, I think that he, I'm not sure that he knows exactly how the end is going to play out.
Could it be with the Lakers?
Sure.
But he's a free agent at the end of the season.
So if he's going to continue to play, there's clearly a chance he's somewhere else potentially.
Your whole family.
I mean, but again, he could stay with the Lakers.
I'm just saying.
Your wife and her friends and all the activities that they do for the local ranks or something.
Yeah.
Somewhere of activity.
You move your whole family to your wife's activities.
It's pretty easy, bro.
He can move pretty easily.
I'm not going to lie.
I'm trying to think of any other player situations to monitor.
Is there anything that you're going to drop this week anyway so you could just tell us?
Nothing right now.
Nothing?
You would have dropped it already.
Yeah.
I would hint to you something.
What's a story you're working on?
Yeah.
Give us something you're working on.
I mean, I'm definitely tracking this case.
Yeah.
It's really heavy.
But I don't know when we're going to have updates on it necessarily.
Because it's all on arraignments, charges, things like that.
I mean, this will play out over the next year.
Will he be at the trial?
No plans to do that right now because we don't also know the dates.
We know the arraignment dates, though.
Then late November and early December.
Oh, wow.
For Billups and Rosier.
So we're going to see this soon.
Yeah.
This is going to play out in the semen.
He's the semi-arraignments.
So after you do the arraignment, how long until you start talking about that shit?
Do we know?
I don't know.
I was acting like I knew what it was.
You asked the semen.
I didn't know what it was.
I thought arraignment is just a trial.
I think arrangement is when they, when they, I think they tell you what when they figure out what the charges are.
Yeah.
After several weeks to a year, it could take between trials.
I have a crazy kind of like lead conspiracy.
Okay.
Tell me if I'm crazy for this.
But I've heard that Dwight Howard is actually straight.
I have never even thought you were straight.
I don't venture into that lane.
No.
That's never even come across your radio.
Hold on.
Yeah.
What people said he's actually a straight guy.
There's no way he loves what's your source on that.
Dude, it's this local dude.
I mean, you are from Orlando, so people would know.
Extremely local.
Is there any evidence to back this up?
Any data?
What was the question really?
I don't venture into that.
Into what?
Personal side.
Oh, the personal side.
But it affects the game.
It does affect the game.
Back of these sores, all these different things is going to affect.
He did have back surgeries when he was in Los Angeles.
No, he was suffering from back injuries.
Chemistry in the locker room.
Chemistry in the locker room.
Yeah, that's a that's a.
I mean, if he's got the source, he's like, he's the source.
I'll tweet this.
I'll tweet it.
Yeah, you got to send that out there and see what's going on.
Get like five retweets on that.
Come on, I go viral.
I might go viral.
Yeah, I go viral.
That should help.
Yo, post that right now.
Watch that.
That would be your number one tweet ever if you posted that right now.
I don't, I don't, I think people would unfollow.
Dwight Howard, breaking news, Dwight Howard.
Breaking news.
I'm going to let the local source go.
Dwight Howard Locker Room00:01:41
Fair enough.
What if you did?
Dwight Howard.
Breaking news, Dwight Howard confirmed straight.
I don't know how that you would get more calls about.
Your phone would be blown up.
It would be safe.
More than the Lucca trade.
More.
Way more.
Way more.
The Lucca trade is believable.
I'm looking at this.
Yeah, we love you, Dwight.
I love you, Dwight.
You're Superman to me.
Damn right.
Hey, listen.
Superman.
Don't do that.
That's literally Superman.
Fun as mature adults.
Fun and sexuality is none of your business.
Yeah, let him do whatever he does.
I got mad kids.
He got to be a little.
Got to be a little straight.
Yeah, sure.
Okay?
Shout out to White, dude.
Shout out to White.
We love you, Dwight.
Listen, guys.
First of all, thank you so much for being here, my boy.
I appreciate you.
This is awesome.
Thank you for all the schools, man.
Congratulations and everything you've achieved.
It's a very difficult position.
There's really like one of you at a time.
It's kind of a crazy Pope.
It is like that.
It is kind of.
It's a lot of responsibility.
I feel like I'm a servant to the audience.
Like, I feel like it's a responsibility to deliver.
Yeah.
And so that's every day.
You are a public servant in a lot of ways, bro.
I feel like I'm because the audience are the ones that drive.
They need information.
And they need to know what's going on.
Facts.
So it's my job every day to deliver accurate, honest, first information.