The Secret Album That the NBA's Best Executive Doesn't Want You to Hear (PTFO Vault)

How did the shadowy general manager of the Oklahoma City Thunder, Sam Presti, become an urban legend? Pablo unearths a treasure buried by its own elaborate design... then dances into The Jazz Rabbit Hole with Wyatt Cenac and a special mystery guest. (This episode originally aired June 12, 2025.) • Subscribe to Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut/ for bonus holiday content • Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter https://pablo.show/ for exclusive access, documents and invites 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.

• 0:01Pablo Torre?

  Hello, it's me, Pablo. So we've done, doing the math, 327 episodes of Pablo Torre Finds Out since we launched in September 2023. And it is the end of 2025, and I could not be prouder of our tiny, little, and extremely overworked newsroom that has created this bizarre sports news magazine show that is television, but also, obviously, an audio-first podcast. Because we've punched above our weight, I think, especially this year. But the stuff that we did before, the previous, you know, hundreds of episodes, we have some favorites that we are now concerned that you maybe have not heard yet,

• 0:46Pablo Torre?

  or maybe don't realize are even better when you listen to it a second time. And so during the holiday break, we're bringing you our favorites from the PTFO Vault. And we also have a newsletter, by the way, www.pablo.show, where I'll be doing some stuff over the holiday break especially. Please subscribe and support our approach to independent sports journalism. But most of all, thank you. Thank you for making this show not just a weird experiment, but a community of people who support the kind of mission that we're on, to hold to account extraordinarily rich and powerful people while also taste-testing, you know, athlete-branded weed. We contain multitudes, as does our vault. Please enjoy.

• 1:28Pablo Torre?

  I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale, exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities. Please drink responsibly, because today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 1:52Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

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• 2:52Speaker 03

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• 3:59Pablo Torre?

  Do not open what's in front of you yet.

• 4:02Speaker 04

  Is it a very angry letter from Stephen A. Smith? It's just him being like, "How dare you not believe that I could be serious about running for president."

• 4:13Pablo Torre?

  I can say that it is not that, although I can't rule out the fact that he might say that to you at one point.

• 4:18Speaker 04

  All right, now I'm even more curious.

• 4:22Pablo Torre?

  The extent to which I've told you that we're doing a kind of different share and tell today in which it's just you.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  You just said, "Hey, come do the show." No other details, so yeah. Batter up.

• 4:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and now you got this thing in front of you.

• 4:35Speaker 04

  With my name on it, yeah.

• 4:36Pablo Torre?

  It has your name on it. It's very expertly wrapped, as always. This is our NBA Finals coverage.

• 4:42Speaker 04

  All right.

• 4:43Pablo Torre?

  Welcome.

• 4:50Pablo Torre?

  But my first real question for you, Wyatt, is whether you know anything about the executive in charge of the Oklahoma City Thunder? A guy by the name...

• 4:57Speaker 04

  Sam Presti?

• 4:58Pablo Torre?

  Of Sam Presti. What else do you know about this man?

• 5:02Speaker 04

  He was from the Spurs organization.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 5:05Speaker 04

  And then got the job in Oklahoma City.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  And his first name is Sam.

• 5:12Pablo Torre?

  That's kind of how it goes, I think, in general with Sam Presti. Who, by the way, this year, did win the NBA's Executive of the Year Award. His team is in the NBA Finals, obviously. They're playing the Pacers right now, the Oklahoma City Thunder. And he is, I think to the point of you not knowing much beyond what you gave me, extraordinarily private. He is very secretive. We don't know a lot about him, by design.

• 5:39Speaker 05

  I want to look on national television and apologize to that man for any questions I've had about how exceptional he is as an executive. I'm dead serious. I don't apologize often. But Sam Presti, on national television, I'm gonna say this. I, Stephen A. Smith, owe this man an apology. I don't give a damn about the championships right now. I can't when I'm a Knicks fan. I can tell you this. To have 15 picks, to have that roster, to have them this young, playing at this level, this man... The man is a special executive.

• 6:17Pablo Torre?

  And all of this means, for people who just aren't familiar, that they overcame the loss of the three consecutive MVPs that Sam Presti drafted in his first three drafts. He took Kevin Durant, then Russell Westbrook, then James Harden in his first three seasons as the GM. And in fact, while those three MVPs left Oklahoma City, for bigger markets, Sam Presti, who has had a ton of incoming interest from other bigger markets, he never did, obviously. He never left. And so what he did was he stockpiled a zillion draft picks. He traded for Shay Gildes Alexander, the season's MVP, which is impressive in its own right, 168 games. He got a city that pretty much nobody wants to willingly play for back to the finals.

• 6:59Pablo Torre?

  And the secrecy of him, the secrecy of this organization, which has been a bit of a black box, has been this way for so long that there is one story from Grantland years ago in which a reporter for Fox Sports said, quote, "When it comes to getting a one-on-one interview, it would be easier to get access to the leader of ISIS."

• 7:22Pablo Torre?

  End quote.

• 7:23Speaker 04

  Didn't ISIS, didn't they have social media for a while? Imagine if that's your, your job is, yeah, I'm the social media manager for ISIS.

• 7:31Pablo Torre?

  My real passion is making music, but I, my day job, I am, I am managing the ISIS social feeds.

• 7:37Speaker 04

  We've got some pretty fun TikToks.

• 7:39Pablo Torre?

  All of this is to say, and I want you to be aware of this before we proceed any further,

• 7:43Speaker 04

  All right.

• 7:44Pablo Torre?

  That Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you, Wyatt.

• 7:48Speaker 04

  Specifically because of me?

• 7:50Pablo Torre?

  Well, that part I can't necessarily isolate, but...

• 7:54Speaker 04

  But in general?

• 7:55Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, he doesn't want this to happen.

• 7:56Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 7:57Pablo Torre?

  He's also very media fluent. And I say that because one thing I can report is that a little over a decade ago, he actually explored hiring our extremely plugged-in buddy Brian Windhorst away from ESPN to work as an information guy for the Thunder. And the question of like, why would he do that? Why would he do that? It's because- Yeah, we gotta put up our wind horse fingers. Yes, that's right. The reason that Sam Presti considered hiring Brian Windhorst to kick the tires on hiring him away from ESPN is that information to Sam Presti is currency. It is an edge, a competitive advantage. And you don't surrender that information. And so Sam Presti never speaks to the media on the record during the season.

• 8:40Pablo Torre?

  He actually, in a very careful way, does it precisely twice a year. He speaks once in the preseason and once after the finals are over. And he just talks basketball. That is his entire allotment of public exposure. And so what I started doing, in lieu of a sit down with Sam Presti, him being the third chair with us on this episode of Share and Tell- Right, yeah. We should have still just had a chair. Instead, what I started doing was I was just grinding Sam Presti press conference archival video, looking for the thing that he seems to be trying to hide. And what I found was something interesting. Okay.

• 9:21Pablo Torre?

  Because back in 2012, which was the last year that the Thunder were in the NBA Finals, Sam Presti, perhaps not coincidentally, showed up at his annual preseason press conference that fall, a little more loose than usual, even a little more confident, you might say.

• 9:38Speaker 06

  I like, which many people in here probably don't really care about, but I'll say it anyway because I'm interested in it. I like watching, I like music documentaries. VH1 has this series called Classic Albums. Has anyone ever seen this? It's like, I'm totally hooked. If you know where to find the actuals, like, set of them, let me know. Can't find them. So I do most of my viewing on YouTube. But they've got like all these, it basically takes you back through how the albums were made. So like Pink Floyd, The Wall, Jay-Z's Reasonable Doubt, that was really good. Steely Dan, Asia. And you go back, like, the producer and you hear what they were thinking and the artists

• 10:23Speaker 06

  themselves, what they were thinking when they were doing the actual recording. It's fascinating. I think it's really, really good.

• 10:32Pablo Torre?

  Sam Presti, to continue the scouting report, he did play basketball at Emerson. And that video, by the way, had 28 views on YouTube. For those who want to go check it out. And part of what I learned as the 28th person to see this video is just that his genuine, and to this point, generally undisclosed, non-basketball passion does happen to be music.

• 10:59Speaker 06

  Other thing that I thought was interesting, or for me personally, I share it with everybody since we're on this weird kick.

• 11:07Speaker 06

  And everybody knows I'm really open about all this stuff.

• 11:11Speaker 06

  You catch me on a good day.

• 11:13Pablo Torre?

  And at one point, Sam Presti's asked, actually, which music documentaries about which particular albums he might like to see.

• 11:22Speaker 06

  Pretty much anything by James Brown I would be fascinated by. You know, just to see the, like, just kind of how he guided the bands, because the bands were just so tight and so well put together. I'd be fascinated by that.

• 11:41Speaker 06

  Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, you know, to see that history, basically, coming together. That would be awesome. So I'll stop there, but that, but I can go on.

• 11:54Speaker 04

  When he said Miles Davis, Kind of Blue, it's interesting that he said just that album and not maybe a more expansive Miles Davis.

• 12:02Pablo Torre?

  Well, now I think it's clear probably why I invited you here.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  Sure, yes.

• 12:07Pablo Torre?

  Because you, beyond being a person with an actual expansive record collection, you are a bit of a musicologist. You would do listening parties, basically, on your social channels for a while.

• 12:19Speaker 04

  During the pandemic, sure, yeah.

• 12:20Pablo Torre?

  During the pandemic. And so, yeah, like, I am not that guy. But what I did, in lieu of my musical knowledge, is continue to just fall down the rabbit hole on this. I went to the dark corners of YouTube and Twitter and Reddit, trying to just, like, look into Sam Presti and his love of music.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  Yeah. Did you find, like, a Discogs account for him?

• 12:40Pablo Torre?

  Well, you know, multiple friends of his in the NBA told me that they knew nothing about this, period. But in lieu of a, yeah, a Discogs account or anything like that.

• 12:50Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:51Pablo Torre?

  I found somebody who did know something about this topic.

• 12:56Speaker 07

  Hi, my name is Dara Mirzai. I'm an attorney. I've been an Oklahoma City fan since the day they moved to OKC. I was born and raised in Oklahoma.

• 13:04Pablo Torre?

  And what you should know, Wyatt, about Dara is that he's an Oklahoma native, under superfan, and I found him while digging through Reddit. And Dara, like you, also loves music, not unlike Sam Presti, it seems. And in fact, like you, Dara does love digging through crates.

• 13:25Speaker 07

  So about seven or eight years ago, I was on vacation around the Boston area, and we were visiting some music shops or whatever was left of them. And we went into one and they had this extensive discount bin of CDs, which is full of a bunch of CDs of bands no one's ever heard of. And so I was looking through them and all of a sudden I stumbled across one and I thought, oh, this is funny. This guy has the same name as the Thunder GM. I picked it up and it was obviously a really old CD, and so I figured it was some local musician from 20 years ago. And so I just bought it. I mean, I've bought CDs for worse reasons before.

• 14:08Speaker 07

  About a week or two later, I finally put the CD in just to hear what it was like. And I thought it was gonna be like an Akusuk album or whatever. And all of a sudden, 20 seconds in, the guy starts talking. I'm like, I've heard this voice. Like, this is definitely Sam Presti's voice.

• 14:25Pablo Torre?

  And so Wyatt, what I'd like you to do now is please open the package in front of you and describe it for those not watching on YouTube, please.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  All right.

• 14:35Pablo Torre?

  Because what you are doing, what you have in your hands, is what Dara himself was holding almost a decade ago now, when he was looking very closely at this strange found object.

• 14:49Speaker 04

  It is a CD cover. It says Sam Presti. The title of the album is Milk Money. There's a picture of what appears to be a young Sam Presti in shorts of the time. This feels very much, I would say, mid 90s, the where the shorts are going way past the knee. Because that was a time in life where men felt they had to cover up their knees.

• 15:20Pablo Torre?

  So the black and white photo, that's kind of like artistically shot, right? Like the foreground woman is out of focus.

• 15:25Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:25Pablo Torre?

  Uh, the text is like the sans serif, like red.

• 15:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 15:29Pablo Torre?

  You know, it's like a highbrow kind of aesthetic.

• 15:32Speaker 04

  There's someone else who could look at this and say, oh, this is the design style of like seven like indie backpack hip hop albums of the time.

• 15:44Pablo Torre?

  Right. And of that time, uh, it turns out is Sam Presti. He was a drummer at Emerson College. And the voice that Dara heard when he was listening to this thing on loop and started Googling all these search terms, it didn't exist anywhere else on the internet.

• 16:03Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 16:04Pablo Torre?

  No one had posted this. There was no audio of this music anywhere else. And there still isn't, by the way.

• 16:10Speaker 07

  So a couple of years ago, I actually tried to put it on YouTube. I just thought it'd be fun. Wasn't trying to make any money off of it. And I put online just Sam Presti Milk Money, nothing like Thunder GM's hidden rap album.

• 16:24Speaker 07

  And I put it online and got a couple of views. And then a couple of days later, I kind of just started getting some messages of just some people asking me to sort of take it down. So eventually I did.

• 16:36Pablo Torre?

  Who asked you to take it down?

• 16:38Speaker 07

  So I don't know who they were, but uh, they were just complaining like, hey, should this really be out there? This was kind of something he did when he was young. And, and I sort of started talking to them and I don't have any proof of it, but it felt like it was someone who kind of might've known Sam or was in their camp and just like, I'm not really sure if we want that out there. And so, you know, I was, I was just like, okay, I don't want to mess with anyone. I'll just take it down. I don't want to cause any problems.

• 17:05Pablo Torre?

  You don't want to be at war with your favorite basketball team over this CD that you found in a crate?

• 17:10Speaker 07

  Yeah. And at the time, uh, I was traveling back to Oklahoma City a lot. I didn't want to get banned from Thunder games or anything.

• 17:19Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I will say that banned for posting Thunder GM's hidden rap album would be an incredible headline.

• 17:24Speaker 04

  That would, yeah. I'm looking on the back here, and this is all accurate here, the sort of back production credits.

• 17:33Pablo Torre?

  I believe so.

• 17:35Speaker 04

  Because it says this was put out on Relativity Records. Is that, like...

• 17:40Pablo Torre?

  What does this mean to you?

• 17:42Speaker 04

  36 Mafia was on Relativity. Common was on Relativity.

• 17:49Pablo Torre?

  It raises the question of like, why Sam Presti does not want this on the internet? Because presumably, like, the question is, is it actually so embarrassing that you would want this scrapped?

• 18:03Speaker 04

  Right.

• 18:04Pablo Torre?

  Right? And so what I can tell you is that, even though Sam Presti did not want me to do this episode with you, I have done now significantly more than merely acquire this copy of the album Milk Money that he released. An album, by the way, that his longtime PR person, Matt Tumbleton with the Thunder, has never heard before.

• 18:23Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 18:23Pablo Torre?

  I am told. What we're kind of doing in this episode, Wyatt, is making our own version of one of Sam Presti's favorite things. We're gonna make the Milk Money music documentary.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  Also, one other thing in the production, you said the chap we were talking to, his name was Dara?

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  So, this is written and produced by Sam Presti under Relativity Records and Dara's Dream Publishing. It's Sam Presti's nightmare, but it seems like it's Dara's dream.

• 19:19Pablo Torre?

  So Wyatt, at this point, I just want to turn your attention to some of the band members involved in the production of this album.

• 19:24Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 19:24Pablo Torre?

  Because, again, Super Thunder fan, Dara randomly unearthed this thing in that Discount CD bin in Boston, and it turns out that Milk Money was more than merely Sam Presti's musical debut.

• 19:37Speaker 08

  Hey, everybody. My name is Mike Tucker. I'm a professional saxophonist. I'm a Grammy-nominated saxophonist who teaches at Berklee College of Music. I'm a professor there, and I also tour regularly with trumpet player Arturo Sandoval.

• 19:52Pablo Torre?

  At the risk of ruining this interview already, do you have your sax nearby, Mike?

• 19:58Speaker 04

  I feel like people meet a comedian and they're like, "Tell me a joke," and it's like, "No." Or if you meet a dentist and it's like, "Hey, take a look at this tooth." "No." But saxophone player, "Hey, do you happen to be strapped right now?" "Of course, I'm a saxophone player. I'm always strapped."

• 20:25Pablo Torre?

  For the record here, Grammy-nominated saxophonist Mike Tucker.

• 20:27Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:29Pablo Torre?

  Was ready on all sorts of fronts. I mean, when I asked him, "Do you remember meeting Sam Presti," who was, again, playing D3 basketball at Emerson at the time?

• 20:38Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:39Pablo Torre?

  He did not hesitate.

• 20:40Speaker 08

  So the first time I met Sam was actually at a rehearsal for this recording when I was a junior in high school. But Sam, you know, he definitely made a real impression on me. My friend, Matt Moran, he was a pianist, he doesn't play anymore, but we both were playing together, and Matt went to Concord Carlisle High School, which Sam attended.

• 21:02Speaker 09

  Yeah, so my name is Matthew Morin and I used to be a musician, a jazz musician, a jazz pianist, and then I became an ethnomusicologist and a professor. And now I'm a dean at a community college in California, Santa Ana College. So Sam and I went to the same high school. He was a year ahead of me and he was definitely one of the cool kids. There was a band room and we were really dorky, right? Like, we were like losers and we hid in the band room. Like, we would eat our lunch in there and he totally would come and listen.

• 21:49Speaker 09

  You know, and it wasn't fake. He really did. Like, he was like, he looked up to us as these dorky kids as like, you know, like a really like popular basketball guy with a girlfriend and all this other stuff, you know, that we, we looked up to. That was like, that was the best, you know? That was the best. And I think it actually did a lot for our self-confidence that we probably never admitted to ourselves, that then he asked us to be on this album.

• 22:20Speaker 08

  Basically, like, his concept was like, he didn't want to do anything like specifically jazz or hip-hop, but he was into both. So like, you know, when we recorded, we recorded a couple jazz tunes, but then there were a couple like, kind of like spoken word, kind of rap things in there, too. I actually just, the other day, when you guys contacted me for this interview, I hadn't listened to the album since we recorded it, basically, you know?

• 22:45Speaker 09

  Oh, wow, wow, wow.

• 22:47Speaker 08

  But I listened back to it yesterday and it was like, probably in like 1996 or '07 that we recorded it. So it was like at a time where like hip-hop artists were collaborating with jazz musicians.

• 23:00Speaker 09

  Are you a basketball fan?

• 23:02Speaker 08

  I'm, I mean, man, like, I'm not at all.

• 23:09Pablo Torre?

  But why this era, dare I say, might be very familiar to you?

• 23:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, like he was saying, there was a big connection between jazz and hip hop, whether you were talking about Tribe Called Quest, but also thinking about Guru was putting out the Jazz Matas albums and Digable Planets. And so there was this thing that was happening around that time. I think that predates Cornel West's rap album.

• 23:40Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 23:41Speaker 04

  Which is a thing that exists.

• 23:44Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 23:45Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 23:45Pablo Torre?

  You're talking about noted Matrix Cinematic Universe cast member Cornel West.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, you might know him from The Matrix. Nothing else, just The Matrix.

• 23:57Pablo Torre?

  But again, conscious hip hop, right?

• 23:59Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 24:00Pablo Torre?

  Was the brand. All of which is to say that track one of Milk Money, the introduction, sounded like this.

• 24:09Speaker 10

  Music transcends race, religion, sex. It transcends all of that. It's a reflection of the human heart.

• 24:19Speaker 11

  You're somebody that can decipher that for you, you know? You say what it means, you dig what it means, huh? You flip. I mean, flip for real.

• 24:26Speaker 12

  Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Well, yeah, that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down, you know? So the only way I knew how to do it was just get to people that were close to me that I thought could carry out, you know, and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about. So I went and I got Mark Panaski from way back, Dave Wolford from way back, and, you know, Jason Reese, Chris Hall both came in and did some horn work on it for me. I got Matt Moore and Mike Tucker, just killing them.

• 25:09Speaker 12

  James Blackwell doing some cuts. Got Matt Bynum from Jersey with his man Isla from Philly. It's a flow over track that we did, you know? And it's tough because I didn't want to overstep my boundaries because I'm not a hip hop purist, I'm not a jazz purist by any means, you know? But it's music that I love and it's stuff that I wanted to do, so.

• 25:32Pablo Torre?

  So why, what are you thinking as you listen to track one of Milk Money for the first time?

• 25:36Speaker 04

  The first thing I'm thinking is there's a real humility that he has that I feel like I want to commend him for. As Boat sang, he is someone who appreciates his music, but does not consider himself an aficionado. The other thing that stands out to me, as I was listening to it, there was that horn, that sort of horn riff that I couldn't place, but I recognized it. And I'm still having trouble recognizing it. I feel like maybe it was from a Guru Jazzmatas album. I'm not 100% sure, but then there was this audio collage of things that were happening.

• 26:21Speaker 04

  There was a piece from The Roots from Proceed.

• 26:28Speaker 04

  There was something from, you could hear Q-Tip in there. And so the thing that was teed up earlier where I was mentioning this moment in time and The Roots and Tribe and Digable Planets and all this stuff. It is, yeah, it's, he and I were drinking the same water. Yeah, yeah, this is, I know you, Sam.

• 26:53Pablo Torre?

  He could not be more clearly a fan of a Tribe Called Quest.

• 26:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 09

  And that got Matt thinking. I'll just say that the hip hop influences were his. Like, he was really, I think, down that road. He was picking the genre that had less cachet and less like marketability.

• 27:16Speaker 09

  Because instead, he wanted to lean into the harder thing. Because it really was his creation. It wasn't like Mike and I were calling the shots. Because if we were calling the shots, it would have been straight ahead jazz, every single track, and probably nothing but like uptempo. And there is a really strong parallel to what he does right now.

• 27:36Pablo Torre?

  And so that whole thing about like Sam Presti on this quest to win a title in Oklahoma City, which has less cachet, less marketability, again, no star players, demand trades there, or sign there as free agents. The TV ratings also compared to the larger markets, obviously worse.

• 27:52Speaker 04

  If Sam Presti were in a larger market, if he were in New York. I don't know that he has the cachet to say, "Hey, I wanna stockpile draft picks." I wanna basically-

• 28:08Pablo Torre?

  So many draft picks.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  I wanna go into the basement for a little while and tinker. And when you think about, you know, that sort of world of indie or backpack, conscious hip-hop, whatever you wanna call it, I feel like for so much of that, it was, "Okay, yeah, you're going into the basement and you're just tinkering."

• 28:29Pablo Torre?

  And I think that exact argument might be embodied in the title of what turns out to be the album's fourth track, which is an original song, titled "Nothing to Lose."

• 28:45Speaker 13

  Freeloader. Yo, here and gone. It's Mother Nature's sad song. That's why when we alive, we gotta strive and keep on. So shift in the drive now. Put your minds in it.

• 29:03Speaker 13

  Life's lesson, chapter one. Slice you a section. From the pot graph, a word craft, a mic that's an asset. An incline slipped in the vinyl wood. Pursue the paragraphs, the polar caps in the loose. Lay back, lounge core depth, nothing to lose. And it reminisce and blitzen as I shifted the cruise. I'm paying dues, ain't about aggression. Or how you dress in this progression of minds that can't be learned in one session. That's why confession to the self is harder than line. Trying tribulation, crying alert, pinnacle sirens. Properties of steals, iron fire fly towards the back. Life impede, crazy copper feed, blood drenched the map. Ask yourself why stamina swing low on the two. Through the grassy duke, situation thicker than glue. Snares, holler, presty test me.

• 29:46Speaker 13

  Feel that the chemistry ill rap, distill that extract the never-

• 29:50Pablo Torre?

  I should just say that he rented a place in New Hampshire himself. He donated all of the proceeds from Milk Money and also this live concert that the band performed in, according to Mike Tucker, the saxophonist. He donated all of the proceeds from this concert in front of like 300, 400 people in Boston to charity. Oh, wow. Yeah, and so the charity, all the proceeds went to the Extraordinary Needs Fund at Boston Children's Hospital. Oh, wow.

• 30:16Pablo Torre?

  Which is like a pretty, just, I, I find it hard to, to, to poke any holes in that part of this. Yeah. And then they produced another album together, actually, whose artwork has been floating around the NBA dark web. The album is called All Things Considered.

• 30:35Pablo Torre?

  It's a black and white photo of Sam Presti. That's him in the far background. Yeah, so he's like this Waldo character. Yeah. Who's just in the back with a chessboard in front of him. And again, the metaphors kind of speak for themselves at this point. But, yeah, a guy who had become known for his decision making is sort of like trying to hide in the background of his own follow-up album cover to Milk Money. And time for this band was short, by the way, ultimately. Like, everybody after these albums came out and then disappeared, uh, everyone went off in their own directions. Mike and Matt and Sam did not stay close.

• 31:18Speaker 09

  No, there's no, I mean, there really is no relationship, but it wasn't like out of disrespect. It was just like, we, we didn't have the album, so like you sending me that was like awesome. I was like, this is, this is crazy.

• 31:30Speaker 08

  And I had no idea about his career, to be perfectly honest, because like, I'm not like a sports person. And then like, I get a random call, it's like, hey, man, this is like George from, um, from Oklahoma City Thunder, I, I work with the Thunder for Sam Presti. Sam's gonna be in town like next week and he'd love to like meet up with you, just wondering what your schedule is. And I was like, Oklahoma City, I was like, is that a college team? Is that, I know Sam's like doing basketball. And then we reconnected and when he came to Boston, he, he, we met up at a club that I was playing at. He was telling me how like, he's always had a very long vision and he'd just see like talented players who might not be like the, the superstar, but he could see something in them and see how he was gonna develop that.

• 32:14Speaker 08

  He made all of his players take a financial, um, management and awareness course.

• 32:19Speaker 04

  He was like, yeah, man, you know, everything's so expensive, you know, a gallon of milk is like, you know, so he's still, and he's, you know, Sam grew up in a, in a working class, uh, family, like his, he grew up with a single mother, um, his mom was a nurse, you know, he really worked hard for, for everything he's, he's got.

• 32:37Pablo Torre?

  You just told a story before about Sam talking about like the price of milk.

• 32:43Speaker 04

  That's actually hilarious. Yeah.

• 32:45Pablo Torre?

  And the album's name is Milk Money. But not unlike Sam Presti in the Milk Money era, I also had a vision. And, uh, I decided to not give this up.

• 32:58Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 32:58Pablo Torre?

  And I tumbled further and further down the Sam Presti jazz rabbit hole, listening to the eight tracks on Milk Money on like a truly disturbingly endless loop.

• 33:07Speaker 04

  The jazz rabbit hole sounds like, that sounds like the, the music show I need to make.

• 33:13Pablo Torre?

  It really does.

• 33:14Speaker 04

  Hey, everybody, welcome to the jazz rabbit hole. It's your host Wyatt Sinak. Tonight, we're gonna go down the rabbit hole of the CTI record label. That's right, you're listening to the jazz rabbit hole with Wyatt Sinak.

• 33:28Pablo Torre?

  And on tonight's show, my guest Pablo Torre is gonna text Thunderguard Alex Caruso at 1:15 a.m. the night before game two of the NBA finals to ask if he knew about his boss's jazz rap albums. And he will not respond.

• 33:47Pablo Torre?

  I'm sorry to Alex Caruso, by the way, like, again, it's just, I, I just couldn't, I was like, again, I'm a dog with a bone on this thing.

• 33:53Speaker 04

  Did you go to Alex Caruso because you thought that maybe somewhere in Alex Caruso is a, is a,

• 34:02Pablo Torre?

  is a, is a twenty something white rapper?

• 34:05Speaker 04

  It's interesting you went to him and, yeah.

• 34:08Pablo Torre?

  You know.

• 34:08Speaker 04

  Not Isaiah Hartenstein.

• 34:10Pablo Torre?

  Didn't wanna, didn't wanna, you know, profile in any particular way.

• 34:14Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 34:14Pablo Torre?

  Just, uh, felt very important that I, uh, consult Alex Caruso specifically.

• 34:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:18Pablo Torre?

  But I didn't give up. I continued to scour the internet to find anybody, uh, musicians particularly, that Sam Presti might actually have stayed in touch with because I wanted to know what happened to that guy.

• 34:29Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 34:30Pablo Torre?

  Who got buried by his own design. And I spotted another name, a name that I do think Wyatt, you would recognize as, again, a, a musicologist, an expert in this particular era. And this mystery guest did in fact respond to my request for comment by agreeing to an interview.

• 34:49Pablo Torre?

  And we're gonna meet that person, Wyatt, after the break.

• 34:54Speaker 04

  On the Jazz Rabbit Hole.

• 34:57Speaker 04

  With my special guest, Pablo Torre.

• 35:07Pablo Torre?

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• 35:40Speaker 14

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• 36:10Speaker 15

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• 36:48Pablo Torre?

  You're vaguely familiar with what I do, I guess?

• 36:50Speaker 16

  Yes, I've found out, yes.

• 36:53Pablo Torre?

  Amazing, amazing. When I cold tweeted you, I was like, I had the desperation of a man at the bottom of a rabbit hole. I don't know if you could smell that on me?

• 37:03Speaker 16

  No, man, it was too early for that. I was like, damn, it's 6:30.

• 37:06Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I was in the bathroom when I tweeted Branford Marsalis, for the record.

• 37:10Speaker 16

  Hey, it works.

• 37:12Pablo Torre?

  Could you introduce yourself?

• 37:14Speaker 16

  My name is Branford Marsalis. I play music.

• 37:18Pablo Torre?

  Oh, come on. That's it?

• 37:20Speaker 16

  Bruh, I'm a musician, that's it.

• 37:23Pablo Torre?

  Multi-Grammy winner, wrote "The Bright Thing," saxophonist, Fight the Power, Public Enemy in '89.

• 37:29Speaker 16

  None of that, none of that.

• 37:31Pablo Torre?

  Branford.

• 37:32Speaker 16

  You know, it's like Sam. It's like Sam.

• 37:39Pablo Torre?

  So whether or not you realize this, there are a zillion ways that you may have already heard the legendary tenor saxophone of 64-year-old Branford Marsalis, who, beyond all the other stuff I already mentioned, has played with Miles Davis, and Sting, and The Grateful Dead, and The Tonight Show Band, among many, many others. But I also remember Branford, maybe most vividly, from his cameo on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in 1994.

• 38:06Speaker 17

  Why don't you put that down and come sit next to me?

• 38:18Speaker 16

  Oh my god, 30 years ago now. That's pretty cool.

• 38:25Speaker 16

  How's that, everything cool? Hey!

• 38:28Speaker 16

  It work? Perfect, Branford, dude! Good, I'm glad you liked it. So look, I'm off like a dirty sheriff.

• 38:35Speaker 18

  Hey, peace with two fingers, man.

• 38:36Speaker 16

  I can hide behind the couch and play. Yeah, sure, I can do that.

• 38:40Pablo Torre?

  But the reason Branford Marsalis is friends with Sam Presti, it turns out, goes a lot deeper than jazz and rap.

• 38:49Speaker 16

  I mean, first of all, it is entertainment at the end of the day. But there are people in this profession who genuinely love what they do.

• 39:01Speaker 16

  And then there are other people who genuinely love the attention that can be generated for them because of what it is that they do. When I'm meeting other musicians, I never leave it off with how many records I've sold. I know people who do. Hey, man, how many units did you sell? Are you serious? I mean, that's the conversation because, you know, I'm from New Orleans. I'm a country boy. But New York is a city for very ambitious people. And so I would say, so how you doing, bro? How you doing? And then they would proceed to tell me every gig that they have that month. And then I would say, well, that's cool. But I didn't really ask you what you were doing. I asked you how you're doing. My passion is for the thing, not not for the notoriety.

• 39:47Pablo Torre?

  And that, to be clear, is also the sort of New Yorker and podcaster that I personally would like to be, which brings us back to basketball and jazz, these two institutions that are often compared to each other and happen to be colliding right now as the Oklahoma City Thunder, built by Sam Presti, and the Indiana Pacers, coached by Rick Carlisle, are quietly making their case for a very jazz-inflected championship, even more than if the actual Utah Jazz had made it.

• 40:21Speaker 16

  In music, there's the visible part, like the solo, people see the solo or the singer. But then there's the invisible part, and that's when the musicians have to use their skills to support a person who is in the front. Now, that is called comping, C-O-M-P-I-N-G. Piano players do it, guitar players do it. Sometimes the horns do it, but it's like in horn parts, the horn parts support the singer that's comping. Thanks to Bruce Hornsby, I have a sometimes physical chat, but a lot of texting between Rick Carlisle and myself.

• 41:07Speaker 16

  So after game one against the Knicks, I wrote Rick and said, and I I've never seen anything like that, you know, your kids are amazing. And he writes back and says, you really like these guys. They love comping as much as they love soloing. And I was like, this is the hippest dude on the damn planet. That's just not something you're gonna see in a conversation with somebody outside of the the the music business. But he's a smart cat, man. He always has been.

• 41:35Pablo Torre?

  And so I'm finding out so much already, which is to say that the NBA Finals of the year 2025 AD are also the Branford Marsalis Finals, because you have this way in to both sides.

• 41:46Speaker 16

  Yeah, it's kind of crazy.

• 41:48Pablo Torre?

  But this is the scent I've been tracking is that you had a connection to Sam Presti because of the research and the the amount of just rabbit hole diving I've been doing. I didn't realize that you also knew Rick Carlisle.

• 42:02Speaker 16

  Yeah, Sam's a jazz fan and Rick is a music fan, but Sam's he's a music fan too. He's a jazz fan and and we struck up conversations and and he's he's also talked to Winton about jazz and the relationship between team building, uh, like building a team is very similar to building a band. You have to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each player. And you have to set up a a construct so that you challenge the musicians to eliminate their weaknesses, where the impulse will always be to double down on one's strengths, because it is certainly much easier to enforce what you already know than to go through the painstaking reality of

• 42:45Speaker 16

  addressing the things you're not very adept at. And it's it's pretty amazing when you you look at the both of those teams and how they've been constructed. Uh, we keep inventing ever since, you know, LeBron went to Miami, the the big three, they don't they don't really have a big three.

• 43:03Pablo Torre?

  No, that's the other story of this finals beyond the jazz is literally this.

• 43:09Speaker 16

  Their teams.

• 43:10Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 43:11Speaker 16

  Because even though Shay is the MVP, he doesn't have the persona where he's like, I'm the straw that stirs the drink. He's not on that vibe.

• 43:20Pablo Torre?

  The big three thing was the basic math. It was top-heavy.

• 43:24Speaker 16

  Right.

• 43:25Pablo Torre?

  And what you're seeing in a way that I didn't consider actually until you articulated it, was the way in which jazz as a metaphor is actually even more meaningful. Because jazz is a metaphor, historically, in my understanding, it's always been basketball's free-flowing, improvisational, all of the sort of like flowery language. You're talking about something interesting, more interesting than that to me. You're talking about guys need to get a [bleep] hold of their ego and sublimate themselves for the greater mission.

• 43:52Speaker 16

  Absolutely. And it's free-flowing as long as everybody understands what the construct is and what the rules are.

• 44:00Speaker 16

  In jazz, you have a basic chord. It's the same chord you hear all the time, like G7. Every song has a G7.

• 44:07Speaker 16

  And then there are notes above that where you can extend the harmony. Piano players are just doing that. And I'm like, "Why are you doing that?" He goes, "Well, man, it's in the harmony." I said, "But it's not in the song, bro."

• 44:18Speaker 16

  Harmonically, it's correct. Musically, that was some dumb [bleep] you just played. And they tend to be pissed off when you say it because they only know how to play one way.

• 44:30Pablo Torre?

  By the way, now I get why you and Rick Carlisle get along. I get it. I know enough about Rick to know how you guys may be bonding.

• 44:37Speaker 16

  Man, he's smart as hell and he don't care. I love him.

• 44:41Pablo Torre?

  He's brilliant and he does not care. Those are the two scouting reports I often get on Coach Carlisle.

• 44:47Speaker 16

  Love him.

• 44:51Pablo Torre?

  What kind of a critic are you?

• 44:53Speaker 16

  I'm the worst. They ask my colleagues. They hate when I show up, but I've learned to keep my mouth closed. So they like me more now. But, you know, they used to come and say, "Well, what do you think?" And I'd tell them and then they'd be like, "Man, you're an [bleep]. Get out of here." But if you ever went to a string quartet concert and watched, they are making constant communication with one another. It's like if you watch the NFL Combine and they say, "This guy can run the 40 in 4.2 seconds. That's amazing." And his vertical leap is 40. Can he play football? And that's, that's the music thing. It's like, man, can you play music? It's great that you can play the hell out of the saxophone. There's a lot of saxophone players who play saxophone better than me. I'm not trying to be humble. I know this to be true. But I play music better than them, so. I win.

• 45:38Pablo Torre?

  It's part of why Sam Presti is fascinating because Sam Presti, beyond his discretion and privacy, which is now very well known, I actually am curious as to your read of him as just a guy that you'd never met before.

• 45:52Speaker 16

  Sam loves his job, first and foremost. He doesn't love what it brings him. He loves that job. And the thing I love about him is if you didn't know what he did, you wouldn't know what he does. He wouldn't introduce it. He'd never bring it up. That's my kind of dude right there. They were coming to New Orleans to beat up on my lowly Pelicans. The play-by-play announcer, Joel Myers, is a buddy of mine, also a big jazz fan. And we spent a lot of time talking about records. And we were gonna meet for dinner and Sam found out and said, hey, man, I'm coming to dinner with y'all. I'm like, wow. Don't you have more pressing matters to do, like what you're doing now? And, you know, and he was in New

• 46:35Speaker 16

  Orleans and he came through and it was great. And we had a meal and we talked about nothing about basketball. And there's nothing else to the story.

• 46:44Pablo Torre?

  What is your scouting report on Sam, the musician, as you've come to understand it?

• 46:48Speaker 16

  He's never come in and sit in with us, so I have no way to judge. I mean, I just know he's a big fan of the music. I didn't even know he played drums. Perfect example. He never brought it up. He never brought it up.

• 46:58Pablo Torre?

  That's wild.

• 46:59Speaker 16

  Had no idea.

• 47:01Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so I'm gonna do something, Grantford, because what I've been doing at the bottom of this rabbit hole, maybe you now know where this is going.

• 47:09Speaker 16

  I don't know yet.

• 47:10Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so I've been scouring the earth and the internet.

• 47:15Speaker 16

  Oh, you found something.

• 47:17Pablo Torre?

  I just want to play you something.

• 47:18Speaker 16

  Yeah, man.

• 47:19Pablo Torre?

  And again, you're you, unvarnished nightmare critic for anyone who sees you in the audience. I'm gonna play you something.

• 47:30Speaker 16

  All right.

• 47:30Pablo Torre?

  And I'd just like us to both listen and then we can discuss. So would you mind?

• 47:35Speaker 16

  No, I would not mind. Sam, I'mma rip you, bro. I'm ripping you, man. Gotta do it.

• 47:51Speaker 19

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini. That's go.o.gle/workspacewithGemini.

• 48:24Speaker 14

  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.

• 48:54Speaker 01

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• 49:29Pablo Torre?

  So I just need to acknowledge here, as a human being who makes things, how absolutely terrifying what I'm about to do must be for Mike Tucker and Matt Morin and Sam Presti and the rappers in that recording studio in New Hampshire in the mid-'90s. Because asking one of the greatest living musicians to critique the long-forgotten music that you had made before you were legally allowed to rent a car is kind of a nightmare, I must admit. Especially if you are an extraordinarily private NBA executive who never wanted anybody to hear this. And especially when Branford Marsalis's self-scouting report as a critic, once again, is this.

• 50:13Speaker 16

  I'm the worst. They ask my colleagues. They hate when I show up.

• 50:18Pablo Torre?

  But now, it is time for Branford Marsalis to find out. The album is called Milk Money.

• 50:27Speaker 16

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:29Pablo Torre?

  Sam Presti is the artist, and this is the introductory track.

• 50:34Speaker 16

  Excellent.

• 50:36Speaker 10

  Music transcends race, religion, sex. It transcends all of that. It's a reflection of the human heart.

• 50:45Speaker 16

  I mean, that was like somebody rich, you know? He was just firing, going all over. So he can play.

• 50:52Speaker 11

  I'm not gonna disguise for that play, you know? Play what it means, take what it means. You flip. I mean, flip for real.

• 50:59Speaker 12

  Yeah, I understand what you're saying. Yeah, that's what I tried to do is, you know, because I had all the music in my head that I wanted to do, but I had to track everybody down, you know? So the only way I knew how to do it was just get to people that were close to me that I thought could carry out, you know, and kind of expand on the things that I was thinking about. So I went and I got Mark Panaski from way back, Dave Warburg from way back.

• 51:30Pablo Torre?

  What's running through your mind?

• 51:32Speaker 16

  Sam understands what the job is and he keeps the beat. But there's a few guys that would play that groove and add extra things, really nerdy extra things, like playing parts on upbeats or playing against, because it calls attention to them in a certain way. And all the musicians go, "Woo!" You know, so, and every time I hear it, I'm like, "Why are they doing that shit? Just play the gig, bro."

• 51:55Speaker 12

  James Blackwell doing some cuts. Got Matt Bynum from Jersey with his man Isla from Philly. It's a flowover track that we did, you know? And it's tough, because I didn't want to overstep my boundaries, because I'm not a hip-hop purist, I'm not a jazz purist.

• 52:12Speaker 16

  It's more R&B.

• 52:15Speaker 16

  But it has solos and it uses interesting chord structures. So it falls more in line with jazz than anything else. But the, you know, the trumpet player was clearly has been checking out Miles because he has the muted trumpet and he's playing it the way Miles plays it. I just love the fact that Sam can keep a groove. That sounds like the 90s, the 90s vibe.

• 52:36Pablo Torre?

  I demanded to mention that you played sax on Fight the Power.

• 52:40Speaker 16

  Oh, yeah, that was, you know, that was Spike Lee's idea. And Spike called me, we were neighbors and-

• 52:51Pablo Torre?

  In Fort Greene?

• 52:52Speaker 16

  Yeah. I think the most important part of it for him is that we were, we were friends and neighbors before he became famous. And he said, "I want you to play on this song with Public Enemy." I'm like, "You kidding? Okay, great. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be great. It's called Fight the Power." But it was, it was Spike's idea.

• 53:07Pablo Torre?

  Man, I got two more tracks to play for you, if that's-

• 53:11Speaker 16

  Sure.

• 53:12Pablo Torre?

  Our next track in music class with Branford Marsalis. It's titled "16 Baltimore Ave."

• 53:28Speaker 16

  So, two songs, both by James Brown. One is called "Cold Sweat" and the other one's called "Superbad." And it's kind of like a mashup of those two. The saxophone player was a big fan of Mike Breckers. Michael Brecker was the guy that he used to play that. Way too many notes, though, for that groove. And when I first got to New York, I was more of an R&B player than a jazz player. And there's a scale called the pentatonic scale. And that's all I could play was the pentatonic scale. And the first thing he played was the pentatonic scale. And I went, "Oh, that's me. That's where I live."

• 54:29Pablo Torre?

  You're at the front of the class and this band now looks to you and they say, "Professor, what did we just do here?" You say?

• 54:39Speaker 16

  I would play records for them. There are more efficient ways to do what you're doing. And I would certainly play the James Brown records.

• 54:52Speaker 16

  There's an instrumental record that James Brown's band did. It was "The J.B.'s." That was the name of the record, "The J.B.'s." And they had a song called "Past the P's" on there. It was really great. And then there's another record that the trombonist Fred Wesley did called "Fred Wesley and the Horny Horns."

• 55:14Speaker 16

  And they really do know how to play that style of music and still leave enough space for the music to breathe, rather than flood the zone with flurries of 16th notes. But the rest of the band was very disciplined. I mean, Sam played the parts. He didn't really try to deviate. The bass player stayed with it. The piano player... Soloing leaves a little bit to be desired, but everybody, you know, it was, man, it was good. It was good. I enjoyed it.

• 55:42Pablo Torre?

  I got one more track for you.

• 55:44Speaker 16

  All right.

• 55:44Pablo Torre?

  This one, I think you may be familiar with.

• 55:54Pablo Torre?

  So now I feel like a cruel scientist.

• 55:59Speaker 16

  Yeah, I wanna know, yeah, I wanna know what you think. Let me know what you think.

• 56:02Pablo Torre?

  I mean, look, so here's what I know, right? That's Coltrane.

• 56:06Speaker 16

  Yes.

• 56:07Pablo Torre?

  This is a standard. This is something that, as I listen to it, I began to feel bad playing it for Branford Marcellus.

• 56:16Speaker 16

  Wow.

• 56:17Pablo Torre?

  I'm imagining them in the box that I'm in, watching your face. And I began to just sweat a bit. So, because you're also, by the way, for people who are not familiar, of course, with what you have also done, rearranging that song, could you just fill us in? I'm demanding that you fill us in on like your familiarity with this song.

• 56:38Speaker 16

  Oh, yeah. It's a song I wouldn't play, for the most part.

• 56:42Pablo Torre?

  Because?

• 56:44Speaker 16

  It's just, hmm. It's like, it's like one of the running jokes we have in the group is that bands that lean towards rock and roll or R and B, every time that they play what is considered a jazz tune, it's always in a minor key. I don't know why, but it's either Mr. PC or it's the Miles Davis song So What.

• 57:25Pablo Torre?

  What about the drum solo in that one?

• 57:27Speaker 16

  Well, the thing that was most interesting about the drum solo is that that was called, that's the thing we call trading fours. Like the, cause the song is a 12-bar form, I'm trying to simplify it, and it's in four fours. So for, for you folks out there, if you count one, two, three, four, when you get to the next one, that's a new bar. So it's one, two, three, four, two, three, two, three, four, four. And they were playing four-bar phrases. The saxophone player would play for four bars and then Sam would play for four bars.

• 58:03Speaker 16

  Now, a lot of times when drummers would play that, they always make this big sample crash on the first beat that the saxophone starts to play again. I thought it was really cool that he didn't because the other way is just super cliche to me. And it was really cool that he didn't. He just went, swing. He was like, oh, that's kinda cool. That was a great idea. I mean, Sam, go ahead, man. Way to think it through. It's good, man. I know he's gonna be mad at you for playing this for me. It's cool, man. I'm a, I'm a cop the record. Milk, milk money?

• 58:38Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's gonna, I might be the only supplier on the internet at this point, but I'm gonna get you that copy, man.

• 58:43Speaker 16

  Bro, I, I know you now, so you gotta hook me up. It's cool.

• 58:52Pablo Torre?

  But there is one more aspect near the end here that Branford brought up that I do think is worth mentioning. Because a story about an executive's secret former life as a drummer at a liberal arts college also relates to something that Branford and his late father Ellis, the musician who most inspired Branford and his brother Wynton, would talk about a lot. And it feels especially relevant today.

• 59:21Speaker 16

  The essential destruction of the liberal arts college in the United States was one of the worst things that he felt could ever happen because in the 1950s, there was no such thing as pre-law. So a lot of these lawyers were taking theater and reading Shakespeare.

• 59:43Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 59:44Speaker 16

  And it brings a whole different side out of you. But now it's like, you know, pre-law, law, pre-med, med. And then they say, oh, doctors don't really communicate like they used to. Well, they don't learn the stuff that they used to. They don't understand the value of poetry and the value of a liberal arts education. And liberal arts colleges are dwindling everywhere. The fact that Sam is an executive and he also had this music career where he was playing music, it's going to make him a better executive. You know, because everything you learn, you carry with you.

• 1:00:20Pablo Torre?

  All of which reminds me of something. Something else that Dara, the Thunder superfan, the crate digger who found this physical used CD and enabled this entire episode, had found out.

• 1:00:35Speaker 07

  We always say like, impress who we trust, right? He makes a trade, he makes a draft pick. We just sort of blindly believe it, even if going into the draft, we had no idea who this guy was. But on the same sense, like, we don't know who he is as a person. Everything he says, it sounds like he's rehearsed it over 20 times. I like this album because it's sort of impersonally, is there any sense?

• 1:00:58Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 1:00:58Speaker 07

  I hate to say this, but I think like Daryl Morey, if this was him, he'd be like, should I re-release the deluxe edition or something? You know what I mean? This is some guy that he's been the only constant in this organization, but I don't think I've ever really seen him laugh at anything, you know?

• 1:01:18Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, and to be honest, I have no idea how the NBA's executive of the year, one of the best executives in all of sports, is gonna react once he hears this episode that he did not want to exist. And I have no idea about that because Sam Presti, as was entirely expected, did decline to comment.

• 1:01:43Pablo Torre?

  Which brings our music documentary here back to how we started.

• 1:01:49Speaker 04

  What'd you find out today, Pablo?

• 1:01:52Pablo Torre?

  I would like to tell someone that I know in real life, "Hey, do you have that sax on you?" And to immediately be serenaded by.

• 1:02:00Speaker 04

  All right, well, you asked for it.

• 1:02:14Pablo Torre?

  That is so much better than I thought it would be.

• 1:02:19Pablo Torre?

  We've turned the tables on Sam Presti now. We have scouted the young Sam Presti.

• 1:02:24Speaker 16

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:02:25Pablo Torre?

  Thank you for doing that, Branford.

• 1:02:26Speaker 16

  I hope he's not mad at me.

• 1:02:28Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 1:02:28Speaker 16

  Hope he's not mad at you, but it was a pleasure to do it. It was a pleasure to listen to the music and talk about my man, so that's cool.

• 1:02:35Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, another line in your bio is that you're now officially a Pablo Torre Finds Out correspondent.

• 1:02:39Speaker 16

  I see that I brag about. See, and I see, that's the thing. I'd name drop that [BLEEP]. Everything else, no, but I'd name drop that.

• 1:02:54Speaker 04

  You've been listening to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

• 1:03:00Speaker 14

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• 1:03:30Speaker 19

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