The (Summer School) Sporting Class: Sex, Dolan and Contract Haircuts

Did the Knicks owner's pump-up speech help them win it all? Did their players stop fornicating because of it? How much do billionaires matter to championships anyway? And should superstars sacrifice millions for the greater good? David Samson and Domonique Foxworth chart the power and powerlessness of the billionaire class. • Subscribe to "The Domonique Foxworth Show" https://pod.link/1642566714 • Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  You haven't lived, David Samson, till you been out.

• 0:10Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 0:45Speaker 03

  Welcome to 215 Maple Drive. We just put this property on the market.

• 0:51Speaker 04

  Love the crown molding.

• 0:52Speaker 03

  Oh, wait until you see the walk-in closets and the bathroom tile.

• 0:56Speaker 04

  Does it have Verizon FiOS? You know, 100% fiber internet?

• 1:00Speaker 03

  No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.

• 1:03Speaker 04

  No FiOS? Yeah, no thank you.

• 1:07Speaker 03

  Don't you wanna see the rest? Okay, bye-bye.

• 1:10Speaker 05

  Get Verizon FiOS, because when you're moving, it's 100% or nothing.

• 1:16Pablo Torre?

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• 1:58Pablo Torre?

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• 2:25Pablo Torre?

  Are we going to call this the sporting class? Well, on that note, on that very note that Dominique just muttered under his breath. Are we calling this the sporting class or are we calling this something else?

• 2:38Speaker 04

  It's your, it's your name on the show.

• 2:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, I know what I would call it.

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Where's Skippy? What would you call it?

• 2:44Pablo Torre?

  Skippy's on real vacation, actually, I think. Are we calling it?

• 2:47Speaker 04

  Is that what it's called?

• 2:48Pablo Torre?

  I don't know.

• 2:49Speaker 04

  I feel like there has to be a frame of reference for it to be a vacation.

• 2:53Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 2:53Speaker 04

  If you're always on vacation, it's not vacation.

• 2:56Pablo Torre?

  With that attitude. David Samson, former president of the Marlins. John Skipper, former president of ESPN. Domonique Foxworth, former president of the NFLPA. These are the characters and what we're calling this sport.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Ooh, Pablo, you've never been a president of nothing.

• 3:13Pablo Torre?

  That's not true.

• 3:14Speaker 01

  Don't bring up no high schools. Don't bring up no high schools.

• 3:16Pablo Torre?

  The president of my high school debate team.

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  An elected position. I have a constituency. I'll have to get in line. All the sports media people who are.

• 3:30Speaker 04

  There's only one.

• 3:30Pablo Torre?

  There's not all.

• 3:32Speaker 04

  There's just one. Who's the second?

• 3:35Pablo Torre?

  I take the over.

• 3:35Speaker 04

  What? Do you, wait, you have information that you're not willing to disclose? There's another person in sports media other than you and Stephen A.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  He needs, he needs more.

• 3:43Speaker 04

  Are you journalizing?

• 3:44Speaker 01

  He needs more evidence. He can't just start spewing stuff.

• 3:47Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 3:48Speaker 04

  Some credibility. Dominique, is it you?

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Running for president? Absolutely not.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Mr. Closet.

• 4:04Pablo Torre?

  We need, we need to start a summer school sporting class now, I think.

• 4:26Pablo Torre?

  The thing Dominique was saying about what is it that management does? And how do we value it? And how do we praise it? Despite having great skepticism, at least from this chair, about it, brings us to one of the great apparent character developments in the history of sports, which concerns the owner of the Knicks, James Dolan. And I don't need to belabor all of the reporting and investigating we've done on this show, which is exhaustive and worthy of such attention, I dare say. The private surveillance state, the mismanagement of the team, his friendship with Donald Trump, all of this stuff, we talk about it. But the thing that happened, Dominique, which I want people to appreciate,

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  is that a podcast hosted by Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart, the account, posted a long rumored video of James Dolan giving a pep talk that preceded the entire championship run. And before we judge it, in case you haven't seen it, here's just a taste of James Dolan motivating.

• 5:33Speaker 06

  But right now, this time, was as close as I've ever seen a team be going into the playoffs. What that would mean to win a championship, to get a ring, to have your ultimately, have your numbers up in the rafters, right? You will forever, ever be a part of New York City. No matter where you go and what you do the rest of your lives, when people introduce you, even if you become the President of the United States, right? They'll start off with NBA champion 2026.

• 6:14Pablo Torre?

  So Dominique, I want to start with David. David, you grew up a Knicks fan. You worked directly for your father-in-law. Set formerly stepfather. I keep on doing this formerly stepfather. It's okay. You probably read it wrong. Yeah. But your experience among the billionaire class, the sports ownership class on the inside, leads you to feel what when you hear James Dolan do something that has made him likeable? There were 20 of those, Pablo. So here's what people are not...

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Reporting 20 owners met their teams before the playoffs. And one of them was right. And this was a great speech. There's no question. But owners meet the team when spring training starts or when a season starts. They are sometimes doing it during the season. Once if something is going on bad, but motivating players is something that managers do and presidents and and other teammates. I found the speech to be fantastic because it ended up being right. And I've talked to players about sex before. I've talked to player of players about obituaries before and having the first line in your obituary written.

• 7:16Pablo Torre?

  We will explain the sex thing in a second, but keep going.

• 7:18Speaker 04

  And well, sex is a thing. But anyway, I thought it was great, Dominique. Now, does it make players run through a wall? Does it help them hit shots and win games? I don't believe any of that. I never have. But now, as we look back, it was a great part of what happened.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the speech was fine. Uh, I think that the speech was more for him than it was for the players. Uh, I think generally I'm not a big like pregame speech guy or oftentimes I I kind of stopped doing this and some people give me a hard time, but there used to be a stretch like when I was in NFL and recently I'd NFL people who had like teenage sons who were not necessarily getting everything done. They were like, hey, would you talk to them? And I would do it thinking that I was having some impact and I kind of stopped doing that because I was like, eh, it's just a waste of my time and their time. Like if in order to have some sort of impact, you need to have like a real relationship with somebody and some sustained contact and like something invested in it.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  And it just feels like lip services that I'm just gonna say, hey, hit them books and you're gonna you're gonna straighten out. I feel the same way about some of these speeches where it's like, I mean, if Dolan's in there sweating with you and that that tends to be the way it feels to me. It's like when there's players who are out there with me or even coaches, if they have something invested and of course he has money invested, but it's different. When someone is in that room with you and they're talking about it and then you go out and you are too tired to do one more rep, but that person is doing another rep. I guess that's where I have a hard time of like figuring out this value. Um, the value it adds is are they actually about to do the thing that James Dolan thinks

• 9:00Speaker 01

  is gonna hurt their chances? And then James Dolan face pops in their head and they're like, you know what?

• 9:07Speaker 04

  I ain't [__] tonight. I'm not gonna have sex.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  My man Jimmy D was like, we gotta sacrifice. Jimmy probably [__] tonight, but I ain't gonna do it because we gotta win. I don't know, maybe. I'm sorry to ruin the fun, but it just didn't resonate with me.

• 9:26Pablo Torre?

  No, this speech, again, the rest of it, it's long. It's like 15 or so minutes, maybe. It's him talking extensively about how for the next 10 weeks, you need to sacrifice. And I will give my interpretation as well of why, of A, why he said it, but B, why it was released this way. Part A, why did he say it? I mean, there was, to Dominique's point, a lot of

• 9:50Pablo Torre?

  "we, but I could really use this." "This will change you and it will change me." And I kind of appreciated that level of transparency when he's like, "I, this will change how I am thought of. I want this very badly." And in fact, just to that point, let's hear a little bit more from Mr. Dolan.

• 10:13Speaker 06

  I had this idea that maybe you should give up sex for the next 10 weeks. You don't have to give up sex for the next 10 weeks. But! What you? But! Like Spartans, you know what Spartans are? They denied themselves, right, so that they could have an edge.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  Can I tell you the carla that I would tell players?

• 10:38Pablo Torre?

  To the no-sex Spartan suggestion?

• 10:41Speaker 04

  You can absolutely have sex before a big game, just don't stay up all night trying.

• 10:47Speaker 04

  That was how I tried.

• 10:49Pablo Torre?

  Do or do not, there is no try.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  Just listen, that would be my view.

• 10:53Pablo Torre?

  You hit it with that Yoda.

• 10:55Speaker 04

  And I had that talk, Dominique, and I think you'd agree with nothing good happens with executives or players at the bar at 4 a.m. Like, just nothing good. That's when I get the call at 7 a.m. that there's an arrest or there's a lawsuit, something bad. So I really was a big fan of like between 8 p.m. and midnight. And then go to bed and get ready for the game.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's all fine and good. The probability, the fact of the matter is, the probability shift, the later it gets.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  And the probabilities for extremely awesome things to happen goes up also. No one ever tells you that.

• 11:34Pablo Torre?

  A horseshoe effect.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  No one ever tells you that. Yeah. See, see, you don't know. No one ever tells you that.

• 11:40Speaker 04

  I've been a part of the not awesome at 4 a.m.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  No, I know you've been a part of the-

• 11:45Speaker 04

  But I don't understand what you're saying. You're saying that things get better at 4 a.m.? Go ahead, Dominique. I'm sorry.

• 11:51Speaker 01

  No, no, no, you're fine. I wasn't stopping because you were cutting me off. I think you're, um, the way you're so incredulous about this, uh, is helpful. So I think that there's always balance.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  If only really, really bad things happened at 4 a.m., nobody would be out at 4 a.m., David. Like, the fact of the matter is, no one tells those stories. This is kinda how it works in everything. It's like, you have a low-risk investment.

• 12:20Speaker 01

  You know that you're not gonna lose 10x, but you're only possibly could gain 2x, and you might only lose half what you got. The same thing occurs the later you stay out at night. And there's a point at night where something incredible's gonna happen tonight.

• 12:39Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:39Speaker 01

  It might be in my favor, and it might not be in my favor. This is the truth. I'm just telling you.

• 12:44Pablo Torre?

  Dominique has explained the sex graph for late-night rendezvous for people in sports the same way that venture capitalists see their portfolio.

• 12:52Speaker 04

  I think he's confusing slumpbusters with actuals, so I'm not sure what you're doing. But I, I just haven't experienced that in my career. I've had some, I've had fun at 4 a.m., don't get me wrong, but it was already, it was already a fait accompli by 2 a.m. So I'm talking about new fun at 4 a.m. is harder to come by.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  I think you, yeah, I think that, um, we could have a conversation off-air, cuz I believe that-

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  Should have it right now, right now.

• 13:25Speaker 04

  What do you mean?

• 13:25Pablo Torre?

  Let's break out some graphs.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I think I used the venture capital explanation because I thought that it would resonate with David. But do you not understand, I mean, obviously, you understand the concept of like, uh, risk, volatility, like, yeah, it's the same thing.

• 13:41Speaker 04

  And I'm telling you, to me, it's riskier at 4 a.m. because there's people out who are looking for bad things.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  I agree, David. I agree. And when you put money in a riskier investment, you're likely to get higher gains. So if you are operating at a riskier time where people's inhibitions are lower, the inhibitions that would cause something bad to happen are lower. But the inhibitions that would cause something incredible to happen are higher. I think that you only believe that you've only been able to imagine a roof on how awesome the night can be. It's like, yeah, this one person in me, that's it. That's the roof. I can do that at midnight. I can do that at 2:00 in the morning. I can do that at 4:00 in the morning. What I'm telling you, David, what I'm telling you, David, is at 4, 5, 6:00 in the morning,

• 14:25Speaker 01

  at a long night, that is not the roof, David. That is not the roof, David. Let me let you know, you haven't lived, David Samson, till you been out late, late, late.

• 14:39Speaker 04

  I appreciate the advice. I'm touched. It's like Kris Kringle for me over here, like, Black Santa. I really love this.

• 14:47Pablo Torre?

  Dominique said at the very beginning that he stopped giving pep talks to wayward youth.

• 14:52Speaker 04

  Right.

• 14:52Pablo Torre?

  And here we have, we have exactly that.

• 14:54Speaker 04

  And hit them books.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  Wayward adults.

• 14:58Pablo Torre?

  Let's clip David saying that.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  I will pep talk a wayward adult.

• 15:02Speaker 04

  I'm not offended by Dolan at all, I must tell you, that, and do I think he needed to win this title to somehow that now he's reclaimed? He's the owner and the Knicks won a title for the first time in 53 years. It doesn't change the way he is, and it doesn't change the way that he'll be remembered. It adds a line to his obituary.

• 15:21Pablo Torre?

  Well, it changes the way he'll be remembered. And that is, I think, what we're grappling with right now, is to what degree should it? As, by the way, Karl-Anthony Towns' fiance apparently is not a fan of the policy that has been previously debated now about the sex ban, all that stuff. The real, sort of, to get to the brass tacks of it, it's how should we think of James Dolan now? What has changed? What priors are we updating?

• 15:47Speaker 04

  Can I ask that in a different way? When you think of George Steinbrenner. Do you think about the scandals? Do you think about the suspensions? Do you think about the turtleneck? Do you think about the way he was with managers? And Billy Martin? Do you think about the championships? Or is it an amalgam? That his legacy is all of those things that he did? And that is the memory of George Steinbrenner?

• 16:10Pablo Torre?

  Well, I think the obituary is a really good lens to answer this question through. Because you've got to make choices about how you structure it. What's most important? And George Steinbrenner, I mean, I will literally look up his New York Times obituary. I'm actually curious how they put it. Because in my mind, of course, I lead with, "He won all of the time."

• 16:29Speaker 04

  He didn't win all the time. He didn't win until they got... It's so funny that that is your memory.

• 16:34Pablo Torre?

  But of course...

• 16:35Speaker 04

  He was terrible.

• 16:35Pablo Torre?

  But this is...

• 16:36Speaker 01

  Can I settle this, please? I think that it's just about your proximity to the person and your proximity to when they died. And I think David, being a baseball person, has a much fuller... And being slightly older, has a much fuller understanding of who George Steinbrenner was. And for me, I'm even further away from it than Pablo. Like, I didn't grow up in New York. Like, I think of Steinbrenner, and he's like the prototype or the archetype of like a Major League Baseball owner to me. And he won a lot of championships. That's really all I have. Because we're far enough away from it, and I'm far enough away from it. So I think the same thing is going to be true for Dolan. It's like, Charles Oakley, probably not going to feel great about Dolan.

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Very close to it. But for most of us, like the vast majority of people, they're going to remember James Dolan as the guy who brought a title to the Knicks. And no matter all the other stuff that we're pointing to, that's what's going to happen.

• 17:33Pablo Torre?

  And I don't know if I would write the obit in that way. But I'm realizing, as I look at the New York Times obituary for George Steinbrenner in 2010, the headline is, "George Steinbrenner, comma, who built Yankees into powerhouse, comma, dies at 80." And here's the first sentence by Richard Goldstein, the writer. "George Steinbrenner, who bought a declining Yankees team in 1973, promised to stay out of his daily affairs, and then, in an often tumultuous reign, placed his formidable stamp on seven World Series championship teams, 11 pennant winners, and a sporting world powerhouse valued at perhaps $1.6 billion, died Tuesday morning at a hospital in Tampa, Florida where he lived. He was 80, period." And then it goes on from there.

• 18:15Speaker 04

  So the seven was a big part of that. So query, if it had been one, is the sentence the same, but the seven becomes a one? And if there's one pennant in one World Series, I'm not sure. It may just be comma owner of New York Yankees or owner of world champion, World Series winning New York Yankees. Jim Dolan's obituary will be a long, complicated one because of everything that he's done in his life, from cable vision on to-

• 18:39Pablo Torre?

  But you can almost copy the first part of the sentence. "Promise to stay out of its daily affairs and then, in an often tumultuous reign, won the New York [bleep] Knicks their first championship in 53 years." And I think that, I mean, the thing that I laugh at with this speech, Dominique, is it reminds me of how people have often talked about Trump whenever Trump does something that people somehow, for the first time in memory, kinda like? And it's like, finally, James Dolan is the president. Finally, he is behaving. He has finally become the thing, the office that we wanted him to live up to. That's what this speech has given him for, I think, the first time.

• 19:21Pablo Torre?

  And my sort of gut reaction is, yes, the comment section should celebrate this, I get it. But this is, um, this does not change how I think of him. This is kind of of a piece with his whole deal.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  But you're Oakley. So there's plenty of people who aren't changed about Steinbrenner by reading that first sentence. There's plenty of people got fired by him, plenty of people who did not have good business dealings with him. You can walk inside an owner's room, an owner's meeting, and get 28 different first lines of the obituary about George Steinbrenner. So Dominique had it right. It's all about your proximity, relationship, and also about when he dies. If Jimmy Dolan lives for 40 more years and gets nothing else accomplished, then it's an interesting question about what sentence the NBA championship would be in.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  I think we landed on a name for this. Dominique has it right. It's pretty much how these go when the three of us get together.

• 20:17Speaker 04

  Oh, gosh.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  You guys say stuff, then I clean it up, and then we walk away agreeing that we're so grateful that Dominique has it right, because otherwise, we'd be in the wilderness going to bed at midnight thinking that that's all the best that could happen. Also, back to the speech, I do appreciate, I didn't listen to the whole speech, I couldn't do it, but I do appreciate that the concept of, and hopefully he went down this path of like acknowledging that he is in this situation, he is nothing. Like, I, the thing I want most, the thing that is most important to me, that is so valuable, that will change the way people think about me, change the way I feel, will define my

• 21:03Speaker 01

  life, that's in your hands. I'm a billionaire that can do anything I want in this world, but the one thing that could change my life, I had nothing to do with it. I will have nothing to do with from here on out. I will give you all, buy all the ice you need for your muscles, I'll give you all the STEM machines to recover, I'll give you the best gym you need, basketballs, coaches, pay you all the money, but now, I can't do nothing but watch it, cheer, please, by God, if it means nothing to you, I want you to know that it means everything to me. That's the speech, period. Walk out the room, shed a tear midway through, shed a tear. That's the speech.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  All this other bull**** about Spartans, get out of here with that. That's nonsense. All this other, like, acknowledge that he is powerless and he is entrusting, all of this to them.

• 21:56Speaker 04

  I like the perspective, though, Dominique, of explaining to the players that this lasts forever. When you look at, look at, look at all of us, look at me, I'm 23 years past and it's still associated, World Series winning team president, players, when they win a ring, it's world champion, when, when anybody's in the media, former player, their creds next to their Twitter handle, it either says, it says the best thing they have. If you've, and if all you have is an All-Star, it's, which is- Cool, it says All-Star, All-Pro.

• 22:23Pablo Torre?

  Cool.

• 22:24Speaker 04

  If you've been a Super Bowl winner, but if you're a Super Bowl MVP, it has that. So it's levers. So every one of those players, they won't be in the rafters. I don't know what he meant by that. I think he meant the team is in the rafters. They won't have all their numbers retired, obviously.

• 22:38Pablo Torre?

  Well, maybe.

• 22:38Speaker 04

  That's ridiculous.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  Got it on tape.

• 22:40Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  They got a source. I'm suing.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  He misspoke.

• 22:45Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 22:45Speaker 04

  You can't rely on it. You know this, Dominique. You can't rely on an oral promise.

• 22:51Pablo Torre?

  I, I, I think.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  You can't after four. You can't after four.

• 23:03Pablo Torre?

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• 23:39Pablo Torre?

  I wanna get to, though, what the owner did, or did not do. Because on some level, it is worth acknowledging that James Dolan, despite, I think, the hopes and dreams of many fans, he's still been quite involved with the team. The firing of Tom Thibodeau, replacing him with Mike Brown, James Dolan had his fingerprints all over that. His son, David, is, again, you can imagine the familial dynamic in the Knicks' ownership group and their executive structure. His son is one of the leaders of the team. He works on the sports science stuff and whatever. His title, I will fact-check here.

• 24:19Pablo Torre?

  Senior Vice President of Player Performance/Science Leader?

• 24:24Speaker 04

  Thank you, that was...

• 24:24Pablo Torre?

  What a title that just...

• 24:25Speaker 04

  Standing apart in the show.

• 24:27Pablo Torre?

  Definitely something I remembered and not had pulled into my ear.

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I wonder, like, does he have, does he have science, uh, science background?

• 24:34Speaker 04

  It's not, it's not like chemistry. So, there's a, there's obviously a lot of fathers and sons and fathers and daughters who work in ownership. Jimmy Dolan's father, I think that you should note here who Charles Dolan is, and you should note the Dolan family is still involved with the Guardians, although they have a step transaction with David Blitzer, another name that you all may, might know, but that doesn't bother me that his son works, even though I was a son, I don't think of it that way.

• 24:59Pablo Torre?

  I'm merely saying that the, and by the way, we'll show a photo of Quinton Dolan, who is jacked, so he's familiar with the science at the very least.

• 25:06Speaker 04

  When you say that, like steroids?

• 25:08Pablo Torre?

  I'm not saying that, I'm just saying that.

• 25:09Speaker 04

  Well, when somebody says they're jacked...

• 25:10Pablo Torre?

  What a compliment to pay to wonder, is I so jacked?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  No, jacked, jacked just means muscular, jacked doesn't mean steroids.

• 25:15Speaker 04

  Are you jacked?

• 25:17Speaker 01

  No.

• 25:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm ripped, honestly.

• 25:20Speaker 04

  Oh, you're ripped?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't know this terminology, jacked is more like swole, like bulky, ripped is like svelte, lean, like, you know? You're not familiar with this?

• 25:33Speaker 04

  Well, what are you, Pablo?

• 25:35Pablo Torre?

  I'm, uh...

• 25:36Speaker 04

  Soft?

• 25:37Pablo Torre?

  A- A-jive.

• 25:39Pablo Torre?

  What?

• 25:40Speaker 04

  I know what I am. I'm puffy.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  You're not puffy.

• 25:45Pablo Torre?

  There's a joke here about baby oil that I'm just... I was gonna say, there's a baby oil joke that I am so disappointed in myself for not figuring out yet.

• 25:53Speaker 04

  I am neither swole, nor ripped, nor jacked.

• 25:56Pablo Torre?

  Alright, my point is, James Dolan and his family have had his fingerprints, had their fingerprints, all over this run. They changed the head coach, obviously, the entire structure, hiring Leon Rose, it's, David, in fairness, when it comes to what did the owner do, he did all this [BLEEP] and my, the updated prior for me is, I didn't think you could win a championship with this guy as the owner, and whether it was because or in spite of, which is, I think, netting out to be still quite a debate. It's now obviously doable and that is, that is, that's news to me.

• 26:36Speaker 04

  Same with the Yankees, same with, I'm sorry, the teams you played for, Dominique, do you believe for a second your owner was not involved?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I do.

• 26:45Speaker 04

  You do?

• 26:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the.

• 26:48Speaker 04

  Who is, who is your principal owner? Was it Kraft?

• 26:52Speaker 01

  My Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  No one else, no one else owns me, but.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  Sorry. Who is the owner of the team on which you played?

• 27:02Pablo Torre?

  Who governed you?

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, the governors, um, so, um, Bolin was in Denver.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  And he was like aging and.

• 27:15Pablo Torre?

  This is Pat Bolin, yes.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pat Bolin and they end up selling, they end up selling the team. So he was, um, getting to a, a place where if he wanted to be involved and Mike Shanahan was there and had accumulated a bunch of power. And I, I mean, I'm sure that he had some decision-making power, but he wasn't day to day. Uh, I was only in Atlanta for a year with Arthur Blank, so I didn't, I got traded there, was only there for a few months in the season. So I don't know his involvement. Then I came to Baltimore where, uh, Bishadi was the owner and Ozzie Newsome famously like is very powerful. So like I was at organizations between, um, Ted Sunquist and, and Shanahan in Denver and, um, Harbaugh and Ozzie Newsome in Baltimore

• 27:57Speaker 01

  that I think the owners probably weren't as meddling. I get your point. Yeah, they're always very involved in most places and they probably were involved in these processes also. But I think they were a little more hands off than most places.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  It's great when players think that. That would have been our goal. I always wanted to protect our owner from the players thinking that he was behind the moves and we'd eat it a lot. When there was a required move that came down that was called an OP, an owner's prerogative, which is you, there's no debate. We are releasing this player or we are signing this player. We would try to publicly say it was a baseball decision. It was us because we wanted to protect the owner. But I sat in the room, Dominique, and you've seen it too. I, just owners are involved.

• 28:35Pablo Torre?

  Jeffrey Loria, your former stepfather-in-law?

• 28:39Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:40Pablo Torre?

  God, man.

• 28:41Speaker 04

  Stepfather in. Just that.

• 28:43Pablo Torre?

  Just that, okay, very good. So Jeffrey Luria, stepfather to David Samson. Did he, as the owner of the Marlins, was he sitting in, like, player exit meetings?

• 28:54Speaker 04

  No.

• 28:54Pablo Torre?

  Because that's what Dolan-

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Can't you just say that he was the owner of the team? I'm sorry, the sidetracker-

• 28:58Speaker 04

  It would've been nice, Dominique.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Like, I mean, the stepfather [BLEEP] feels, like, unnecessary and condescending.

• 29:04Speaker 04

  It's fine, normal, I'm used to it.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Like, it's undercutting him, unless it's relevant to the-

• 29:07Speaker 04

  It's not.

• 29:08Pablo Torre?

  Of course it's relevant.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  The parental relationship of Dolan and his son.

• 29:13Pablo Torre?

  I think it's relevant because what David brings is a behind-the-scenes perspective that is behind the scenes of even people who are employees of the owner. And so, I want to know, for instance, along these lines of invasiveness, familial and otherwise, did Jeffrey Luria ever give motivational speeches?

• 29:32Speaker 04

  Yes, of course, of course.

• 29:34Pablo Torre?

  And you watched, did you?

• 29:35Speaker 04

  I was in the clubhouse almost every time. And, listen, one year they worked, we won the World Series. And 17 years, they didn't work. So, there were also speeches during bad times. When Jose died, we addressed the team. So, there are times when you address the team when-

• 29:55Pablo Torre?

  Jose Fernandez.

• 29:56Speaker 04

  He would never be there when we fired the manager, but he'd be there when we hired a manager. So, I mean, there's, owners just have the right to be in meetings when they want to be in. But, like, for example, he called Mike Stanton and said, "You're called up to the big leagues." And I'm saying Mike Stanton because that was his name when he was called up. He's now known as Giancarlo Stanton, but his name used to be Mike. But he won't be involved when we release a player. He didn't call Al Leiter and say, "By the way, we're designating you for assignment." But that's their right. It's, people don't want to do bad things, generally. They just want to do good things.

• 30:30Pablo Torre?

  Dominique is already shaking his head.

• 30:32Speaker 04

  What don't you believe?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I don't know, I believe all of that. I think I was shaking my head because, um...

• 30:43Speaker 04

  You can do it. I have thick skin right now, I'm okay.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Oh, no, no, no, it has nothing to do with hurting your feelings, I'm not worried about that. You've worked at one baseball organization, and I know that owners are involved. I guess the way that you are expressing it is different than I think it takes place in a bunch of different places. And I think the complexity of football changes things a little bit.

• 31:04Speaker 04

  I'm just telling you from meeting with other team presidents, and from being in meetings, and from knowing owners, we all, everyone has the same experience. Like, if you ask Derek Hall, "Hey, is Ken Kendrick involved?" You know, he's not gonna tell the truth publicly, but privately, he'll certainly talk about the role Ken Kendrick plays. If, in fact, that conversation's ever taken place. So, that's all I'm saying.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Do you remember any of the great speeches?

• 31:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, what does rhetorically, what do these things sound like?

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Not unlike Owens. It's, "Hey, guys, this is our, we have an opportunity." A big day to do is after the trade deadline. When we acquire a player, you come in and meet the team, and say, "All right, guys, we gave you help, now go, let's go, let's push through and get to October." When we were down, down 3-1 to Chicago, met the team and said, "Listen, we can win three in a row. We just did it against San Francisco, one game at a time, let's go." And, whatever, Dominique, it's, they're all bullshit.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  Let me hear you give one.

• 32:04Speaker 04

  My speech is always the negative one, unfortunately, because the owner does the positive ones.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, now you have your chance, we're giving you a chance.

• 32:11Speaker 04

  I will give you the speech that I would give to the team. Which is, "Guys, I need you to help me understand two things, please. Number one, we will pay for your drivers. Number two, I've left a phone number on your chair that is my cell number and the number of a chauffeur company. Do not get arrested for drunk driving. Number three, every woman in the hotel, when we check in, is off limits."

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm not...

• 32:41Speaker 04

  Number four. No, you don't like the first three, Dominique? I gotta give you four.

• 32:45Pablo Torre?

  I can't wait for number four.

• 32:46Speaker 01

  I thought, I thought we were going rule of three, and I started chiming, I'm trying to do a little pattern here, but no.

• 32:53Speaker 04

  One more for you, Dominique.

• 32:54Speaker 01

  Never heard of rule of four, but go ahead.

• 32:55Speaker 04

  Gentlemen.

• 32:57Speaker 04

  You are solely responsible for our success on the field. The dysfunction in the front office, the issues that you read about publicly, all of that managerial changes, none of that matters because at 7:05, none of it exists. Either you win or we lose. So go ahead and go win. And that's how I would end it. Four things.

• 33:23Pablo Torre?

  I want to put the music from Independence Day underneath that.

• 33:28Speaker 04

  Listen, it's just happened so many times. Dominique, you've been in team hotels, you know what I mean. It's terrible. It's terrible.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Well, football is so different, man. Like, we are such a unique sport relative to the other major American sports because that stuff on the road, we're in and out, business trips. Like, you guys go and stay in a city for an extended period of time. You go back to the same city multiple times.

• 33:51Speaker 04

  Rule of four, four nights in a hotel.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, so like that, that's a different experience. And of course, football players, like, you'll get to a city and somebody might know someone and try to whatever. But generally, you get in, you have dinner, you have meetings. We go to our room, we go to bed, we get up, we play football, we go from the stadium to the airport. It's not the same situation. Yeah, it's a business trip.

• 34:15Speaker 04

  Where's the 6 a.m. stuff? Where's the 4 a.m. fun in that?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's in Denver, it's in Vegas, it's wherever you are. Only Denver and Vegas because I was in a committed relationship after that.

• 34:29Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 34:30Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 34:31Pablo Torre?

  At the record show, your honor.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  I've never seen a player in a committed relationship do anything. Bible reading was what I was going, baby, at 4 a.m.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  So I was not moved by your speech. It started to get better at the end, but I was trying to give you a chance to give the speech that you said that you're never allowed, you're never allowed to give. I wanted you to give the motivational pump me up speech, and you just made me scared. It was like, uh...

• 34:57Speaker 04

  No, I don't want you to be scared. I want you to be, I want you to rise to the moment and play to your ability and be free from all the distraction. I think that's the thing for me that strikes me about running a sport. Sports team and it's even worse today. There's so much distraction. There's so many people trying to just bring you down and in the old days, they wouldn't really be able to do it and now they can. You know, mental health unfortunately was not as big a deal in my time because there just wasn't this sort of proliferation of anger and negativity and, you know, we all had death threats, but they were done by email or by regular mail. They weren't done in the comment section.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  I like that you you are longing for the old days when people would cut out letters in the newspaper.

• 35:36Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Magazines to send it. Oh.

• 35:40Speaker 04

  We are.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  Really put some work into threatening my life. Now you can just tweet a threat at me. Oh.

• 35:45Pablo Torre?

  I want I want my threats to be arts and crafts projects.

• 35:48Speaker 04

  I wouldn't even go to MLB security over a comment death threat. We only went over things that were sent in the mail, things that were faxed to us back in the day.

• 35:57Pablo Torre?

  If you're not threatening to murder me.

• 35:59Speaker 04

  Right.

• 35:59Pablo Torre?

  By cutting out letters from magazines.

• 36:01Speaker 04

  You don't get my attention.

• 36:02Pablo Torre?

  I am not afraid.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  I'm sorry, Paulo. That's the absolute truth of how we teams deal with MLB security. Don't bother me with the comment section death threat.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  There is a level of commitment that would be scary. Like if you tweet me something threatening, like, all right, you're just firing that out. But if you went to an arts and craft store, bought a glue stick, collected some magazines.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  I'm calling security.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Cutting and pasting on me? Like, nah, this mother is crazy. Cause if I even thought to do that, I would get my sense when I'm at the counter of the store and they're like, yes, you want this glue stick? Yes, ma'am. In these 12 magazines. I'm like, what the hell am I doing? Then I sit down and start cutting out letters. Like, I'm like, don't I got something better to do?

• 36:54Speaker 04

  I don't think you need more than two magazines for a death threat. I mean, it's not, you're not writing a Bible. You can find enough letters.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  So see, what you don't understand is most of those are small letters. You're trying to do a real death threat. You need big letters, multiple colors. You need multiple magazines.

• 37:09Pablo Torre?

  You want some perfume, Az.

• 37:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta, you gotta be able to cut the big.

• 37:14Speaker 04

  Joking about something not funny. I was never that scared of them.

• 37:17Pablo Torre?

  I disagree.

• 37:17Speaker 04

  I mean, what are they gonna do? What are you gonna do?

• 37:19Pablo Torre?

  Probably murder you.

• 37:22Speaker 04

  Just make it fast.

• 38:13Pablo Torre?

  The thing that I want to discuss is what enabled this championship? And the thing, perhaps above all else, as we continue to do our financial accounting of this championship, is Jalen Brunson taking a voluntary pay cut?

• 38:29Speaker 04

  I just think that Jalen Brunson, the whole idea of players taking discounts, and I'd rather Dominique talk about it, I just never had it. I never had a player say to me, "Please, I'm happy not to get paid what I'm worth if you promise to sign someone else." I've just never, nor anyone I've spoken to, experienced that. We've heard players say it, but not mean it.

• 38:48Pablo Torre?

  I want to set the table here because typically I'm the guy who has, of course, investigated such things, but I just want to lay this out at face value because I think face value is quite interesting. So Jalen Brunson basically gave the Knicks a nine-figure discount, agreed to a four-year, $156 million extension instead of waiting a year to sign the five-year, $270 million deal. This was in November of '24. And yeah, this was a news story that also establishes, by the way, that his dad, Rick, longtime NBA coach, got elevated to the lead assistant role of the Knicks. And so there was all this noise back then. But just on the financials of it, Dominique, the idea that a player, the most important

• 39:31Pablo Torre?

  player, took that kind of a pay cut of his own volition. At face value, says what as the guy who, of course, was the president of the NFLPA and also the COO of the NBPA.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  I mean, I, I, the purpose of the union and the animating drive of the union is to give the players the power and flexibility to do all the things that they want. If this is something that Jalen Brunson wants to do, I would be happy for him to do that. My concern is that it creates an expectation for other players and it shifts responsibility from the general managers and the owners, it shifts responsibility for building a good team from them to the players. And if a player who's already having his salary suppressed by a number of different

• 40:24Speaker 01

  factors, if a player feels that the pressure is you should take less or you don't care enough, to me, that feels unfair because like I mentioned, the owners do not have their revenue suppressed in any way, but the players already have. And I don't think it's fair to have like the GMs, when it's your turn, like, okay, you just got me for under market value for the entire portion of my rookie career. Now you gotta pay me my actual value or closer to my actual value. Now you have to find some other places to make up whatever you're losing. It's not my responsibility. So like, again, Jalen, works out perfect for you. Tom Brady, anyone else who has done it, if you want that to happen, that's fine.

• 41:06Speaker 01

  The Jalen situation is even more unique because the GM is his former agent, his agent is the son of the GM, his dad is getting paid by the organization. Like, it's entirely different.

• 41:17Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Don't like.

• 41:19Speaker 04

  Did he not sign a max deal, guys? Could you just give me, give me some facts here because I'm, I must have misunderstood totally. I thought the way it works is that the max deal at that time was four years, 100 and whatever it was, but if he waits a year, then the max deal becomes five years, 270. But then he plays a full year without that extension, without that guaranteed money. Do I have the facts right? So how is it that he was giving the team an extra $113 million? When he got all the guarantee that year, the maximum guarantee that he could get that year?

• 41:51Pablo Torre?

  The logic is, you take the guaranteed money available to you. He left the extra year on the table. And that provided the flexibility of the team to make all sorts of other decisions that materially allowed them to construct a roster.

• 42:04Speaker 04

  Okay, that's an amazing way to look at it. But the way we would look at it is that some players choose to take deals early in their career. As an example, in baseball, it happens often. You get a guaranteed deal before you've played a game. And you give up upside if you're a superstar. And you get great upside if you suck. And there's a lot of players who don't make it to arbitration, but keep getting paid because they sign guaranteed deals. And that's a decision a player makes. And the way Dominique put it about the union, I love, which is, we put players in a position to give themselves a chance to make a decision. And that's what the CBA does in basketball. We read it every year. You can sign now for this, but if you wait, you can sign for that then. And it's always a huge amount of difference. Coke and I cover this on Nothing Personal.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  I think Jokic, I think, is he an example, Coke, of a player who had a chance to do a deal today? Or he could wait a year and it would be an extra $180 million for him or something crazy? So I think that's the CBA talking, not necessarily Jalen Brunson.

• 43:01Pablo Torre?

  But the value, though, just to be very blunt about this, the value to a team of a player who will be flexible in the ways that you would prefer around whether or not he will risk not taking the money on the table. Because he's willing to...

• 43:14Speaker 04

  How much money is he making per year? Could you do the quick math for me?

• 43:18Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, so here's the annual salary of Jalen Brunson. 25, 26, 35 million. Next season, 38. Next season, 40 and a half. Next season, 43. And that's a player option. So totaling $156.5 million.

• 43:35Speaker 04

  And he is a performing, top of the league guy. There are other people who sign max deals in the NBA who are not that, who become an albatross, even though they gave the team a discount because they signed it immediately to get the guaranteed money. And then... They didn't win a championship and they weren't one of the top five players in the league.

• 43:54Pablo Torre?

  But to just do the math here, if Brunson had waited until 25 instead of 24 when he signed the extension, the salaries would have been 46 and change, 50, 54, 57 and a half, 61, a total of $269 million available to him. So that is, again, just a matter of your own financial planning, right? Do I want to take the deal that is here? Or do I want to maximize?

• 44:20Speaker 04

  But there's risk involved in that.

• 44:21Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 44:22Speaker 04

  If you don't perform in that year, then you may not be offered. It's not a guarantee that he would have been offered that deal.

• 44:27Pablo Torre?

  But Dominique, what I'm sort of phrasing here is here are the two timelines that Jalen Brunson could have gone down. One of them was the preference of the team and it enabled a championship. The other one is, you know, a different, probably worse timeline.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  That's something you could, you could guess at, but it, I think most players assume that they can have both. And most people assume that they can have both. Like they, I don't imagine that very many people are like, who've had this level of success, believe like, oh no, I have to take a discount while no one else is taking a discount. I just, I'm sure we all can, and I get the numbers are so big that most of us are like, all right, it's fine either way, but it, it doesn't feel that way when you are this unique a talent in this unique situation. I mean, what are there 20 basketball players at his level or above?

• 45:27Speaker 01

  Like 20 people in the world that does what he does or better. And like, I, I, I feel like that should be properly compensated and he shouldn't have to take a pay cut. I understand the system that we live in, but you can do both. You can have sex the night before a game and still ball out.

• 45:46Speaker 04

  Just don't step on like.

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  Well, look, Tom Brady is the example in the NFL, right? So Dominique is saying, well, what if this becomes a template? What if this becomes a template for other players?

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Can't force players to take this, to take quote unquote discounts. You just can't.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  My concern is not, you won't be able to force them to. But what I don't like is when, and this happens a lot with the owners. And I think you would agree with me here, David, is I don't like, to your point, when the bad stuff happens, they want to fade into the background. So like, I remember having this fight with a bunch of people every time Dak Prescott's contract comes up. Now, all of a sudden, people recede into the background. Now it's your turn, general manager, owner, it's your turn to do your job, to find the value. And it, people start piling on the quarterback or piling on a star player like, you gotta take less. You don't care about winning if you take less. If Jalen Brunson does this, or Jalen Brunson has done this, and we don't say that it's

• 46:39Speaker 01

  not his responsibility, we should not expect it, lots of other fanbases will say, I want to start like Jalen Brunson. Why doesn't our star act like that? And I would say to them, why don't your GM do a better job? Why don't you get a Sam Presti? Do that. Don't look at us and tell us to take a pay cut. Tell your owner to do a better job. That, to me, is the risk that we run.

• 46:59Speaker 04

  I don't think I believe that Dolan or anybody, or Leon Rose, I mean, there could be salary cap circumvention, there could be other ways he got paid, but I, I don't, in my experience, I, I didn't go to a player and say, hey, do me a favor and take a discount. We would offer a player what we were willing to pay the player within the confines of our salary structure to build an entire team. Because Jalen Brunson is gonna get an extension. And are we gonna have the discussion when he's 58 million of the salary cap and the Knicks aren't winning the title? And there's no ability to win around him. Giannis is a great example. He won it in Milwaukee, and then there was no way to have anything around him. It just didn't work. By the way, it's happening in Cleveland now. It's gonna happen in San Antonio when Fox starts making the max next year. I'm not upset with Fox.

• 47:44Speaker 04

  He got offered a max, he took it, it doesn't make him a bad guy. I don't, I just don't, I don't think players are bad people for taking maximum deals.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  You aren't. You aren't, but sometimes fans are. And the people like that are, that are cutting out letters and sending them, they're upset. And I, it's, those, that's where they come from. They're like, we could have a championship.

• 48:05Pablo Torre?

  This entire conversation, what I'm trying to do here, though, is more precisely quantify, what is the true value and responsibility of the thing that is the most important aspect of what we do here in sports, which is try to win the championship? And the thing at the end here that I'm brought back to is, how much did this mean to an unpopular owner, who now, perhaps, has his obituary restructured, who now has fans defending him in comment sections, who now is a template because things worked to reverse engineer based on his own decision-making? And of course, I am talking about Jeffrey Loria, David Samson's stepfather.

• 48:44Speaker 04

  Winning fixes everything. That's it. I mean, that's the end of it. His first line is now, "Champion. Dolan is forever champion."

• 48:53Pablo Torre?

  But you saw it, though. You saw the way in which the Marlins, as this case study, deeply, comically unpopular owner, wins.

• 49:04Speaker 04

  But his obituary will start with World Series winner. I thought we're talking about that. Dolan, in 10 years, if the Knicks don't win again, remember, we spent 15 years not winning after that.

• 49:15Pablo Torre?

  But what I'm really looking for is, behind the scenes, behind the scenes of the scenes, what was it like to finally get? We see players celebrating it. I want to know, unvarnished, when Jim Dolan is asking for all these things, when Jeffrey Loria is experiencing what it's like, what is it actually like?

• 49:37Speaker 04

  You start meeting the next day about the next year. We had a meeting the day of the parade to start talking about the roster for '04. That's the truth. That's the grind of the championship season. Players will take some time off and then get ready. It's summer league starting soon, the draft, like, it's, the calendar goes on.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  See, he not telling the truth. There was a real big celebration, there was an exhale, there was a lot of fun, and maybe you did have a meeting the next day, but that night, you guys didn't just go home and go to bed and sleep. Like, there was a relief and celebration and joy that you refused to tell us about, but that's fine.

• 50:14Speaker 04

  No, I'll tell you what we did.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  You don't want to tell us what we have to know, but don't lie to us.

• 50:16Speaker 04

  We were at the hotel, no, the night we won in New York with Jack McKeon, who was the manager, the GM, we were in our bathrobes, our hotel bathrobes, at the Hyatt, and we were watching SportsCenter on loop. That's what we did because we were the lead of SportsCenter and it was all about the win. And we were there and we were drinking and together, uh, watching SportsCenter on loop. That is what we did the night of game six, October 25th of '03. It's funny you should mention that. Though I do know, on a side note, four different players with some guests of ours. There was some stuff going on at 4 a.m., so players did find good stuff at 4 a.m.

• 50:58Pablo Torre?

  I would f***ing hope so.

• 50:59Speaker 04

  There was, if you talk to Mr. Beckett and the like, there was activity the night after the World Series.

• 51:06Speaker 01

  So I went to game four of the, the, the best game in professional basketball history. I was at that game and I wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to bring my wife or, or not. And I'm so happy that she came because after that night, I mean, after that game, like, it's a must and I ain't even play. It's a must. That experience, you think I'm just gonna lay down and go to bed after a game like that?

• 51:34Speaker 04

  I went to that game too.

• 51:35Speaker 01

  You think that OG Ananobe deserves to like go home and just like, alright, back to sleep? No. That man deserves a nightcap. Like, you gotta remember that night forever. I didn't break a sweat until we got back to the room.

• 51:47Pablo Torre?

  You think OG Ananobe just settled for the tip that night?

• 51:50Speaker 04

  I would assume he went right to sleep.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  I hate, I hate, ugh.

• 52:03Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 52:09Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 52:30Speaker 04

  I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh. Anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up. Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for Watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.