Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Fowl Shots: We Investigated an NBA Conspiracy About this episode The most brilliant promotion in sports seems simple: If a visiting NBA player misses two straight free throws in the fourth quarter, every fan in the arena gets free chicken. But the untold story of Brickin' for Chicken is a tale of psychology, philanthropy and unintended consequences — and nobody wants to admit the truth. So we teamed up with Oddball's Amin Elhassan to reveal hidden evidence, pointing to a new theory about this quid-pro-bird. And then we (literally) chased down The Robin Hood of Wings: no less than Giannis Antetokounmpo himself.
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2:56 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours. And today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.
3:08 Speaker 02 That's why I signed in Milwaukee, so I can get free cigarettes for life.
3:14 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:17 Pablo Torre? You're listening to DraftKings Network.
3:32 Pablo Torre? Let me just close out all the windows on my computer. How many tabs do you have open on a given day?
3:36 Speaker 03 Eight billion. I don't know. You know, I thought I had a cure by opening a second window for the overflow. Now I have like several windows of a million tabs.
3:44 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the old, "Let's just throw all my laundry in a different room."
3:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:48 Pablo Torre? When your tabs look like LeBron James's Instagram stories after he wins a championship, it's time to acknowledge you have a problem.
3:56 Speaker 03 I can't believe my life is like this.
3:58 Pablo Torre? I can't believe you've been on this assignment for us, that your life is like this, by the way.
4:02 Speaker 03 Yeah. No, you know what, man? Sometimes there's like a calling that happens. I imagine this is what those pigs they use to find truffles.
4:11 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
4:11 Speaker 03 This is how they feel, right? You get that scent and now I can't stop. I keep going deeper and deeper and deeper.
4:17 Pablo Torre? We've been arguing already about can we even show the footage that you've collected that I have not even seen yet? And I don't know if legally we're allowed to, but we'll get to that, I guess. But like, we're talking about blurring and voice modulating. And this is sensitive in a way that I did not presume when we assigned you this.
4:35 Speaker 03 This is one of those things, I remember in the wire they said you followed drugs.
4:40 Speaker 04 You get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money. And you don't know where the [__] is going to take you.
4:48 Speaker 03 I felt like I followed the chicken and I ended up some weird places. Most importantly, places where nobody wants to talk about this.
4:57 Pablo Torre? Your enthusiasm to talk about bricking for chicken.
5:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:01 Pablo Torre? And the resistance you have faced around the sport that you know as well as anybody. Explain why you've been eager to talk about this for people who don't know what any of this even is.
5:14 Speaker 03 Truth be told, you could be a huge NBA fan, watch tons of games on TV. But if you've never been to an NBA arena, you may not even know this promotion exists.
5:28 Speaker 03 In the fourth quarter or in the second half of games, depending on which arena you're in. When the opposing team is at the free throw line. If they miss two free throws in a row. Everybody in the building gets free chicken.
5:42 Pablo Torre? Bricking for chicken.
5:44 Speaker 03 But there was one moment on national TV that happened. Where the announcer let the viewers at home know. Hey, this is why everyone is going crazy.
6:02 Speaker 03 This is a playing game. The winner plays against the Knicks as the seventh seed.
6:07 Pablo Torre? I remember this acutely.
6:08 Speaker 03 Right? The loser then has to go and play against Chicago. So you might not even make it to the playoffs.
6:13 Pablo Torre? This was deep in the third quarter. The Sixers, I remember, had blown a lead.
6:17 Speaker 03 They were awful. They were awful. They were getting booed at home.
6:28 Speaker 03 And then midway through the third quarter, the heater up 11. Caleb Martin, who is usually a dependable free throw shooter. This is one. And then.
6:41 Speaker 05 And the crowd explodes.
6:45 Speaker 05 My oh my, it's so easy to make people happy. Apparently the chicken is very good.
6:53 Pablo Torre? I felt that in Mike Breen's loins, by the way.
6:56 Speaker 03 Yes! Yes! But the crazy thing here is, they've done the charting of what the win probability was for the Heat at that moment in time. It was upwards of 80%. It was in the bag. And that moment is the moment where everything changed. And you see the win probability descend, descend, descend, descend, until all of a sudden, you got a Sixers win. That promo, Pablo, saved them.
7:24 Pablo Torre? So the argument you are making here is that bricking for chicken is changing meaningfully the course of basketball games in a way that has even exceeded the whole novelty, marketing, sponsorship kind of design of it.
7:40 Speaker 03 I'll take it one step further. Dan Lebatard thinks it saved the Sixers organization as a whole.
7:45 Speaker 02 This organization was ready to crumble last night. And then free chicken arrived.
7:51 Speaker 05 Yep, Chick-fil-A.
7:52 Speaker 02 And it made everything better.
7:55 Speaker 06 It's an actual nightmare. Like, the idea that Chick-fil-A is what did this is just, it's unfathomable.
8:05 Speaker 03 There's the graphic right there, look at it.
8:08 Pablo Torre? The inflection point, the cliff.
8:10 Speaker 03 Clearly.
8:11 Pablo Torre? The cliff that the Heat fall off is directly overlaid onto the moment when chicken was up for grabs.
8:21 Speaker 03 It's insane, and yet it's undeniable what happened there. And so, this is one of those moments, I think, where you got something that you want from the marketing side, right? You got something that you want to galvanize the fans with. And then you got something that basketball ops, right? The coaches, the front office are like, hell yeah, this can help. When you get all three of those things in the same place, that's business nirvana.
8:47 Pablo Torre? Business Nirvana for the NBA. Also, I am told reliably, a business nightmare for Meadowlark Media, which has funded truly a new high when it comes to the "we paid Amin what to investigate what the [bleep] graph."
9:04 Speaker 03 Pablo, like I told you earlier, you follow a chicken, there's no telling where you might end up. And where I ended up was in some weird places, investigating one of the 75 best players of all time, right? And in the process, completely ruining my reputation in the NBA, which already wasn't stellar to begin with.
9:22 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, that was a risk that I was expecting to have. Didn't expect it to get this dangerous this quickly, though.
9:30 Speaker 03 For the truth, it's all worth it.
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13:20 Pablo Torre? So this is, in other words, psychology experiment. And we're watching play out. And I want to get into the minds of the players. I mean, you promised me entree into the psychology of NBA players who have all of this at stake. But in terms of how this stunt originated, where does that begin?
13:40 Speaker 03 Well, as with a lot of conspiracy theories in this country, it starts in our nation's capital.
13:47 Speaker 03 Well, I'm vice president of Global Partnerships at Monumental Sports and Entertainment. My name is Lou Stradler. I started here way back 1982, so this is my 43rd year. So this is the man behind this promotion, the man who thought it up. He is the big wig exec for the Washington Wizards, who in essence makes the partners, which is the corporate sponsors, dreams come true.
14:13 Pablo Torre? Which is a hard thing to do over 43 years when you're selling the Washington Wizards.
14:17 Speaker 03 And he's been tasked with coming up with a promotion that helps the local Chick-fil-A franchisees get more foot traffic in the door. And that franchisee was a man named John Natoli. What John Natoli said was, hey, what we found is for most people, if they try our chicken, they come back. But how do we get them to try it? So Lou says, I got it. We'll run a promo where we give away chicken when some sort of event happens. Now, what kind of event could that be? Could it be when the Wizards make two free throws? And then we said, wait a second. That could be negative. Our players could get booed if they go and make the first free throw and miss the second. They'll get booed for missing.
15:01 Speaker 03 So we've got to do something where everyone is incentivized to keep rooting for this.
15:07 Pablo Torre? Right.
15:07 Speaker 03 No matter what.
15:08 Pablo Torre? Where the business side, where the basketball of the Wizards, Lou's side is protected, and also the Chick-fil-A side gets what they want.
15:16 Speaker 03 Gets what they want. I said, wait, let's concentrate on the visiting team doing something. Something that'll generate excitement for Mars.
15:26 Speaker 03 This is the brilliance of it. This is almost, in a way, recession-proof. Hey, what if we're down 50? They still can miss two free throws in the fourth quarter. So it is something that has-
15:36 Pablo Torre? And repeatable.
15:37 Speaker 03 It's repeat- yeah. So there's no point in time where you're like, well, that promotion's over, up until, literally, the final buzzer.
15:46 Pablo Torre? It's funny just to remember how, like, golf works.
15:48 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
15:48 Pablo Torre? And golfers hate when the crowd is interfering with their rituals, how their sport has always operated. How did the NBA react to, yeah, a bold stunt like this?
16:00 Speaker 03 Well, it was an instant hit, right? And it should come as no surprise. Fans love it, of course. Got free chicken. Chick-fil-A, the sponsor, loved it. Hey, we got the thing that we wanted. We wanted people walking through the door.
16:14 Pablo Torre? But the players, though, how did they feel?
16:16 Speaker 03 Well, according to Lou, the Wizards' players loved it, including one guy in particular. Absolutely. The name comes to mind real fast. Martin Gortat for the Wizards. Martin Gortat, as soon as this happened, would stand up, grab a towel off the bench,
16:35 Pablo Torre? and start shaking it over his head to bring the crowd's support. Martin Gortat was so great that they called, they kept calling and saying, "Ask Martin when he wants us to deliver sandwiches." Did Martin Gortat actually get the chicken he was promised?
16:50 Speaker 03 Did he get a chicken? They threw him a party. It was catered and everything. John Nattoli, that Chick-fil-A franchisee, was there. Lou Strudler was there, and Martin Gortat was there. That's what I'm talking about. Well, you guys got everything I asked for. You caused a big hubbub. Listen, all I know, we gotta, we gotta come up with a different rule. Two free throws, two missed free throws, it's too much. Two misses, too much? And? The Chick-fil-A cow. Of course. We'll come back to that a little later.
17:19 Pablo Torre? So I do want to point out something about pro athletes, which is, yes, all of them can afford lots of Chick-fil-A.
17:26 Speaker 03 Yes.
17:27 Pablo Torre? But there is something about watching a Polish-born NBA player with like a Zangief Mohawk, just like enter into a room in America full of free chicken, that feels like kind of the dream he was promised.
17:40 Speaker 03 And then, like a real American, feel entitled enough to say, "The threshold is too high, too missed free throws. What are we doing? Is this communist Russia?" No, it needs to be a turnover, right? He's campaigning.
17:51 Pablo Torre? He's insistently campaigning to lower the threshold to get more free chicken.
17:55 Speaker 03 More free chicken, and at one point, Jon Natoli even promises him, "Hey..." We'll have the cow bring it down the locker room. Alright, we got it. We got it. We'll do that. Any home game now? Any home game, you guys get it. Do we have, do we have a Chick-fil-A at the arena? Yes. Perfect. Can we have someone from the staff bring a little box? We'll bring it down. Just little Chick-fil-A's and maybe like, you know, 10 sandwiches, number fours with pepper jack cheese. Absolutely. And if you guys get up by enough points, we'll bring it to you on the bench while they're shooting the free throws. That's what I'm talking about. And this phenomenon was such a transcendent moment that, as tends to happen in our league,
18:36 Speaker 03 copycats happen across the league, because the league has this group called TeamBO, Team Business Operations. What they do is they take best practices and they spread them to everybody. So they're like, "Hey, this promotion in Washington works really well. Everyone else should do it." And so what you see now is across the league, almost half the league has a chicken giveaway based on missed free throws. So much so to the point, Pablo, that now the Wizards are being targeted for it. They are now, instead of being the beneficiaries of this great promotion, they are now the victims. Just the other day in Philadelphia, a young Wizards player named Kobe Jones received a new nickname from his teammates because of his exploits during the giveaway. Why do they call you Chick-fil-A?
19:19 Speaker 05 Um, so I sold when we played Philadelphia. I missed two free throws. I scored four straight. Four straight. And I gave, I think I fed the whole city of Philadelphia.
19:29 Speaker 03 So Pablo, you might detect a certain note of joy coming from Kobe Jones?
19:34 Pablo Torre? He has a new nickname, he has a new identity that I now will think of every time I think of Kobe Jones.
19:39 Speaker 03 But the crazy thing is, I listen to that sound. I don't hear the talk about the nickname Chick-fil-A, not whatever it is. What I hear is, I think I fed the whole city, right? I think I fed the whole city, and that's what got me thinking. Wait a second, what if this isn't just guys getting rattled at the free throw line? What if there are guys out here who are doing a solid for the road crowd?
20:03 Pablo Torre? Hold on, so you are alleging that these NBA guys, because of this incentive structure with free chicken, are betraying their franchise by taking free chicken and giving them to the people?
20:16 Speaker 03 Okay, two things. One, I'm not alleging anything. I'm asking questions, Pablo. And two, I'm not the only one asking these questions. Take a listen to Chris Miller and Drew Gooden on the Wizards broadcast talking about Tristan Thompson at the free throw line in Washington DC.
20:31 Speaker 06 Last year, he shot 29% from the free throw line and couldn't think of a better person at the free throw line. Cause if he misses this, all the fans are gonna get some chicken.
20:42 Speaker 06 Oh. Uh-oh.
20:46 Speaker 06 Fans are happy, but the Cavs get the basketball back.
20:49 Speaker 03 Did he do it on purpose?
20:51 Speaker 06 I wouldn't be surprised.
20:52 Speaker 03 He's the man.
20:53 Speaker 06 He's the man of the people.
20:53 Speaker 03 He's the man of the people. Look, that's someone asking the question that I was asking, but you don't have to take it from me or Drew Gooden or Chris Miller. Because Spencer Dinwiddie owned up to it. Take a look at this tweet exchange. So a fan tweets to Spencer, I hated watching you miss these fourth quarter free throws, but thank you for lunch tomorrow. And this is what Spencer says back. Missed the second one on purpose, wanted everybody to eat like the squad. Shrug emoji.
21:20 Pablo Torre? Okay, now in the case that I, I know you're trying to build.
21:24 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
21:24 Pablo Torre? There is clearly also just some guys trying to spin their own failures into something positive that they can then, you know, make jokes about.
21:34 Speaker 03 I thought you might say that, right?
21:36 Pablo Torre? I thought you might say that you thought that I might say that.
21:38 Speaker 03 We could do this all day, but I have prepared evidence of a player not only claiming it, but claiming it in the moment. I present to you Exhibit C, Boban Marjanovic.
21:50 Speaker 05 Fans are getting excited here. There might potentially be some free chicken on the board if he misses his second free throw.
21:58 Speaker 06 Oh, man, free chicken on the board.
21:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, so that's why the fans are getting a little, little floppy.
22:04 Speaker 06 Oh, they're pointing to him. Boban's playing with the crowd, saying, "You want chicken?"
22:08 Speaker 05 Here's your job.
22:09 Speaker 06 No, he gave him chicken. He's a man of the people. He's a man of the people.
22:14 Speaker 03 You think he did that on purpose?
22:15 Speaker 06 He did. He gave him free chicken.
22:18 Pablo Torre? Goosebumps. I'd forgotten about that.
22:20 Speaker 03 Goosebumps.
22:21 Pablo Torre? So, for people who forgot about this, dude, that's an eight-point game with four minutes and change left in the fourth quarter, and Boban actually did very clearly say, "I'm gonna miss this," and then missed it.
22:35 Speaker 03 If you are one of the people who's listening and not watching the video, he is pointing at himself, "I'm gonna miss it," and he's looking at the crowd, he's, "I'm gonna miss." He tells the scene.
22:44 Pablo Torre? It's such an insane video.
22:45 Speaker 03 There's a build-up to it. It's not just like, it's not the Spencer Dinwiddie where he misses, "I meant to do that." He is calling his shot like Babe Ruth, pointing to the outfield, right?
22:55 Pablo Torre? He's like the opposite of Babe Ruth.
22:57 Speaker 03 Well, yeah.
22:57 Pablo Torre? All of these guys, on a relative basis, are themselves like sideshows. These are, relatively speaking, scrubs, Kobe Joes, Kristin Thompson this season, Boban. These are, these are circus acts in a circus promo, just having fun off to the side, basically.
23:15 Speaker 03 I thought you might say that, and this is the whole point of my investigation. Follow me if you will, right? What if I told you that the guy that this story is really about isn't a sideshow or a scrub, as you very, very disrespectfully call those fine young men?
23:34 Pablo Torre? I want to apologize.
23:35 Speaker 03 What if I told you, actually, this guy is a former MVP? No, a former two-time MVP. You might know him by his own nickname that wasn't given to him by his teammates after failure. No, it's given to him because this guy is a freak of nature, the one and only Giannis Antetokounmpo.
23:57 Speaker 02 First of all, I'm supposed to be Vegas right now.
24:02 Speaker 02 I was supposed to be in Vegas right now, you know, partying. But I'm here already in Chick-fil-A. Can I have a 50-piece? Sorry, I will put your, can I put your camera, do you mind or no? Sure. I just, there's 150,000 people watching you right now. Really? Yes. So can I, can I have, please, a 50-piece McMinis? 50, exactly. Not 51, none, 49, chicken Minis, yes, 50. And let me have a large drink, no ice, half Sprite, half lemonade. Thank you.
24:39 Speaker 03 So you might be asking yourself, how much does Giannis Antetokounmpo love fast food chicken? And the only answer I can come up with is, as much as any human being has ever loved anything in the history of mankind.
24:50 Speaker 02 I'll be getting a free Chick-fil-A for life now. I want free Chick-fil-A for life.
24:56 Speaker 03 There's no way.
24:56 Speaker 02 That's why, that's why I signed in Milwaukee, so I can get free Chick-fil-A for life.
25:04 Speaker 03 So, there's all of these documented instances of Giannis professing his love for chicken. There's a time he showed up to a press conference with a bucket of chicken wings. There's a time where he tweeted about Roscoe's and how much he loves Roscoe's and wishes they would open one in Milwaukee. There's the trip to China where he goes and he professes love for chicken feet. Is there anything you wanna try but not try yet?
25:26 Speaker 02 I don't know. Can you guys represent yourself? Can we try the chicken feet? I love chicken feet.
25:32 Speaker 03 You love chicken feet?
25:32 Speaker 02 I love chicken feet.
25:34 Pablo Torre? I now am remembering how Giannis, you know, won All-Star MVP and decided to celebrate in the way that you are alluding to. So, so what's it feel like to finally, to finally witness thing?
25:46 Speaker 02 Winner, winner, chicken dinner.
25:48 Pablo Torre? And yet, none of this has to do with the promo that we're talking about, I mean. So, this is his love of chicken in general, but what about how he's interacted with the incentives that we're dissecting?
26:00 Speaker 03 Okay, so, here's a video of him at a Milwaukee Bucks game where there's a chicken giveaway, while the opposing team is in a chicken scenario. Speaking of wings. Oh, everybody gets wings. Free wings from Wingstop.
26:17 Speaker 02 We did. Look at Giannis, he's scanning it. He's capturing the moment. He's getting the uh... He wants to get the QR code to get his freebies.
26:26 Speaker 03 He's on the bench, obviously, it's the end of the game. And he pulls a phone out to scan the QR code for the free chicken giveaway that they're giving to the fans. He's so enthusiastic about chicken, about the promo, he wants in on it like everyone else in the arena.
26:41 Pablo Torre? It's such ridiculous video that I'm overlooking the fact that Giannis just had a cellphone on the bench, by the way.
26:46 Speaker 03 You never know. You never know when a QR code might pop up, Pablo.
26:50 Pablo Torre? But, okay, so granted, fair.
26:53 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
26:54 Pablo Torre? But in terms of his personal at-the-line performance, not as a spectator.
27:00 Speaker 03 Right.
27:01 Pablo Torre? Right? Not as Marjine Gortat, but as somebody with something to lose or, in this case, win. How does he, how does he do?
27:10 Speaker 03 So in essence, Pablo, what you're asking me is, we've seen him be the Marjine Gortat of this, kind of rooting for it for the home crowd. But have we ever seen him be the Boban, where he's on the road and he's...
27:22 Pablo Torre? Yes, that is the investigation.
27:24 Speaker 03 Okay, this is what I'm gonna tell you right now. When it comes to chicken-eligible free throws, Giannis Antetokounmpo is the Robin Hood of chicken giveaways.
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31:03 Pablo Torre? So now we're at the tabs open on now both of our computers. I'm trying to run through the research here that you've assembled for a term that you dropped on our audience as if anybody would know what the [bleep] you're talking about.
31:14 Speaker 03 Yes.
31:15 Pablo Torre? But chicken eligibility.
31:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. What I've found Pablo is when you are investigating ground that has not been sullied by human feet, right? This is fresh snow. This is untouched by humanity. You have to create metrics to measure the things that no one even considered. And so we came up with this term, chicken eligible shots. Because, all right, the way the promo works, in case you haven't figured it out by now, you miss the first free throw, you miss the second free throw, everyone wins free chicken. If the opposing player makes the first free throw, guess what? We don't care what happens on that second free throw shot, right? So the only way we can figure out if you're handing out chicken as an opposing player
32:01 Speaker 03 is if you are converting on chicken eligible shots. So that's the second missed free throw after you missed the first one.
32:09 Pablo Torre? Right. You've created a helpful graphic here. Chicken eligible, parentheses, C-E, any free throw where a miss on that individual shot would result in the activation of a chicken-based promo.
32:18 Speaker 03 Yes, precisely. We have another term we need you to understand.
32:22 Pablo Torre? Why?
32:22 Speaker 03 Because, metrics, we have to build metrics off of this. It's not enough to say, hey, how many chicken eligible shots did he take?
32:29 Pablo Torre? Oh, sorry. You're moving us from counting stats now to...
32:32 Speaker 03 Efficiency, which is the key to any good metric is we want to know how efficient you are.
32:37 Pablo Torre? Of course, of course, I must agree with this.
32:39 Speaker 03 And here's the graphic, the chicken conversion rate, which is your chicken eligible misses divided by your chicken eligible attempts. In essence, this number gives you the efficiency you have at providing chicken to 20,000 people.
32:54 Pablo Torre? So just to over explain this, CCR is the rate at which a player will miss a free throw with chicken on the line.
33:01 Speaker 03 Yes.
33:01 Pablo Torre? And so Giannis Antetokounmpo, when it comes to his conversion rate, when he's chicken eligible, I mean, is what?
33:09 Speaker 03 So his CCR, over the last two years, 80%. 80% of the time, he's got an opportunity to get you chicken? He comes home with it.
33:19 Pablo Torre? Eight out of 10 times, Giannis is converting free chicken for the crowd.
33:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's shooting 20%. Yeah.
33:26 Pablo Torre? That's pretty bad.
33:27 Speaker 03 It's awful.
33:28 Pablo Torre? Yeah, but he's also a bad free throw shooter, though.
33:31 Speaker 03 Sure, yeah, I mean, look, he's not great at shooting free throws, right? Overall, in his career, he's in the 60 percentage spot. But here's the crazy part. When you look at his quarter by quarter free throw percentage, for this year, let's say, right? He shoots 64% in fourth quarters of games. He's a pretty, like, for his standard, pretty good free throw shooter. The only time we have a drop is when he's shooting free throws versus when he's shooting free throws with chicken on the line. And then, that drop goes from 64% all the way down to 20%. Pablo, that is the difference. That, that delta that we have there is the equivalent of Steph Curry shooting a free throw versus Shaquille O'Neal.
34:15 Speaker 03 You're telling me that this guy, who's not a great free throw shooter?
34:19 Pablo Torre? Famously, people count down, crowds are mocking him by pointing out how long he takes to shoot a free throw.
34:37 Pablo Torre? Even that guy, you're saying, becomes that much worse when there is this incentive at stake.
34:44 Speaker 03 It strains credulity.
34:47 Speaker 03 I don't know if I'm saying that word right.
34:48 Pablo Torre? I think stunningly you might be.
34:50 Speaker 03 Okay, it strains it though.
34:51 Pablo Torre? It strains my credulity that you know to pronounce credulity.
34:54 Speaker 03 So it strains credulity to believe that someone who is bad at free throws is magically horrendously worse only when there's a chicken giveaway.
35:08 Pablo Torre? But this is where I just need to continue to channel the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference. I mean, and point out that the theater, and it is convincing theater, graphical theater, uh, full of lots of terms, the theater you're giving us is kind of small sample size theater. Like, I'm looking at the graph, when you say 80%, and I say 8 out of 10, I mean, we're talking about 10 shots here. That's not a lot.
35:30 Speaker 03 It's 10 shots for chicken, right? Because here's the crazy part, when it comes to giveaways of any other sort of variety, pizza, ice cream, hot dogs, whatever it is, he shoots his regular free throw percentage. But when it comes to chicken, he shoots the absolute worst. And Pablo, this is where all of that context we ran through, where you're like, "Why are we seeing all these videos and clips and stuff?" That's why, because this guy has a demonstrated connection with a love for fast food chicken. I wish I had a Charlie from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia bulletin board here, where I could have some strings and attach all the connecting factors here. He loves chicken and he wants to share that love with everyone.
36:09 Pablo Torre? What does Giannis have to say about all of this?
36:12 Speaker 03 Well Pablo, I had the same question. So I went home to Phoenix to see the Milwaukee Bucks play the Suns to ask Giannis myself.
36:27 Pablo Torre? So you land in Phoenix, you land back home, and the Bucks are visiting. They're the road team. There is chicken in the air.
36:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:34 Pablo Torre? But you want to go ask questions, journalistically responsible questions, of the person that we are theorizing about. How hard was that?
36:43 Speaker 03 You know, it wasn't easy, right? Because I don't know if you know this, NBA shootarounds, what they do is they do their practice, their little morning walkthrough on the day of the game. But then they don't let the media in until the very end.
36:54 Pablo Torre? Right.
36:54 Speaker 03 Which allows for players to escape without talking to media if they don't want to. And I had been warned that Giannis notoriously does not talk to media.
37:03 Pablo Torre? He has a reputation, if you're not familiar with the reputation, that he doesn't, for all the videos we played, doesn't actually like giving time to us journalists.
37:13 Speaker 03 And yet, I saw him, and I tried to catch up with him.
37:20 Pablo Torre? This is a video of you running through the tunnel.
37:25 Pablo Torre? That's that patented amino acid sprinting speed.
37:29 Speaker 03 Just missed him. Just missed him. We'll get to the bottom of this. They're gonna try and sneak him out the back way, but we're gonna get to the bottom of this.
37:39 Pablo Torre? That was an episode of Severance. You're running down hallways that don't go anywhere.
37:43 Speaker 03 And so, I'm trying to catch up with Giannis, but he's a big guy with big strides. So, I did the next best thing. When I got to the game later that evening, I went to locker room availability, and I tried to talk to one of his teammates about it. I don't know if you've noticed this, you know, some of these arenas have a free giveaway if the opposing team misses two free throws, right? Sometimes it's chicken, sometimes it's pizza, something like that. Even though Giannis shoots better in the fourth quarter on free throws, when it's the chicken giveaway, he tends to miss those. Why do you think that is?
38:19 Speaker 03 I don't think there's any reason for it.
38:22 Pablo Torre? Shots go in or shots don't go in. This is the end of the game. I mean, to clarify why the thing we alluded to before, we actually did need to do here, the doctoring, the voice modulating, the blurring of this secret video. Why is this so secret? Why aren't we seeing and hearing what you heard and saw?
38:42 Speaker 03 The moment I asked the question, I was asked politely to leave. They didn't want any questions about this whatsoever.
38:50 Pablo Torre? The question you asked, as soon as you articulated, which we did hear, the implication becomes, wait a minute, I should answer this very carefully and perhaps not at all.
39:01 Speaker 03 There was a weird energy around this.
39:03 Pablo Torre? Clearly.
39:05 Speaker 03 From the approach on Giannis, to entering the locker room, to the conversations afterward. All of it felt like the Bucks wanted nothing to do with this and we reached out to Giannis directly through his agent to talk to him, that was rebuffed as well.
39:19 Pablo Torre? Right.
39:20 Speaker 03 I mean, we've tried, even the beat writers, by the way. Guys that cover the Bucks on a day to day basis. When I tried to talk to him about it, everything was like, no, don't want to be involved in it because they were worried, I think, like how that would reflect on them. This is the part where I said, I'm risking my reputation here.
39:37 Pablo Torre? No.
39:37 Speaker 03 For you, for your show.
39:39 Pablo Torre? This is where, as I was hearing what was transpiring, I was like, oh, so the, so the Giannis that is the most vocal global ambassador for chicken in this regard is the exact opposite.
39:53 Speaker 03 Right.
39:54 Pablo Torre? And the general, by the way, the flavor around even the champions of chicken, like, I mean, it's worth pointing out too. Eventually, we here at Pablo Torre finds out, we reached out to Marjine Gortat.
40:08 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
40:09 Pablo Torre? And his response was what? How would you describe that?
40:11 Speaker 03 I won't describe it, I'll just show it to you on the screen. And so, this is his response to our request for an interview. Quote, "Sorry guys, but don't really see that." Laughing emoji.
40:23 Pablo Torre? With the, with the like sweat bead.
40:24 Speaker 03 With the sweat bead on it, exactly. Me talking about chicken, gritted teeth emoji.
40:31 Pablo Torre? Dot, dot, dot, gritted teeth.
40:33 Speaker 03 Pablo, that's not the response of someone saying, hey man, I don't feel like talking about this.
40:38 Pablo Torre? That's not the guy we saw in the video who was like having a chicken party?
40:41 Speaker 03 Right? Like who was requesting that the threshold be lowered on what the chicken giveaway is. This is someone, again, who does not want to be on the record of this. And you know what? It reminded me of Pablo, it reminded me of a prior episode of PTFO. When we went to go see the haunted hotel in Oklahoma City, remember?
40:59 Pablo Torre? Yes.
40:59 Speaker 03 And Nate Robinson, who had experienced supernatural activities there, when we reached out to ask him and he said, No, I don't want to talk about that. And he texted something very similar, right? Like, you can pick up the telltale signs of someone who feels disincentivized to have anything to do with this conversation.
41:17 Pablo Torre? So Giannis doesn't want to touch this. The people that we think would want to touch this actually do not at all. But there is a game that night.
41:25 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:26 Pablo Torre? And so what happens when the ball is tipped?
41:30 Speaker 03 An NBA heavyweight matchup highlights the bill on this Monday night with two teams in full fight mode down the stretch. It's a solid box here in the PHX on Arizona's Family Sports. So, fast forward to the fourth quarter, because that's the only part that we, anyone cares about, right? It's the chicken giveaway, which in Phoenix, by the way, it's called a foul shot.
41:49 Pablo Torre? Right, F-O-W.
41:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, see, it's a double entendre. So, Suns are up two. Giannis gets fouled. About 2 minutes 19 seconds left in the game. He goes to the free throw line. He misses the first one. And then this is what happens on the second one.
42:26 Speaker 03 You hear that, Pablo? They're not counting like they usually do. They're not booing. They are going nuts. And in the corner, I don't know if you saw it, the little Chick-fil-A cow.
42:37 Pablo Torre? Oh, I saw.
42:38 Speaker 03 Oh, the same cow that was at Martin Gortat.
42:40 Pablo Torre? At his chicken party.
42:41 Speaker 03 Yep.
42:42 Pablo Torre? Is back.
42:43 Speaker 03 Dancing its ass off.
42:45 Pablo Torre? God.
42:46 Speaker 03 It was, it could not have been scripted any better.
42:49 Pablo Torre? I mean, again, rational brain wants to enter the conversation, okay? So, as much as it's a signal that something that is total proof of your theory is happening. I mean, like, it was a, that was a two, I'm looking at the score.
43:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:05 Pablo Torre? That was a two-point game. The Bucks badly needed this.
43:08 Speaker 03 Right.
43:09 Pablo Torre? The whole theory that Giannis is being incentivized because of his love of chicken and because of his love of, frankly, humanity.
43:17 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
43:17 Pablo Torre? The theory that he's doing this on purpose.
43:19 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
43:20 Pablo Torre? I mean, again, they need these wins. I mean, why? Why would he do this?
43:26 Speaker 03 Well, why would he do it in general, regardless of whether the game is on the line or not? It's a lot of things. Like, uh, uh, maybe it's, again, he loves chicken. He wants everyone to have it. Maybe it's because, hey, this is my weakness that everyone jeers and mocks me for. That turns it to something that makes me a little bit more affable, right? Maybe it's, hey, guess what, Pablo? Ever look at the All-Star voting? You know who's number one? Not Steph Curry, everyone's darling. Not LeBron James, the greatest player ever, according to some people. Not Victor Wembanyama, this phenomenon. The number one All-Star vote guy in the league is Giannis Antetokounmpo, who plays for Milwaukee. Well, it's not like everyone in Wisconsin turned out to stuff the ballot boxes.
44:03 Pablo Torre? Wait, you're saying that Giannis Antetokounmpo has been using chicken the way Elon Musk has been using money to win elections?
44:10 Speaker 03 I mean, look, uh, what I'm saying is, this guy's really popular.
44:14 Pablo Torre? It's a quid pro chicken.
44:16 Speaker 03 He's really popular, Pablo. More popular, arguably, by the metrics than LeBron.
44:21 Pablo Torre? It is, it is a shock. I did not realize that. That is actually quite shocking.
44:24 Speaker 03 And on the other hand, he loves chicken, right? And you bring these two things together. I'm giving opposing fans, opposing fans. It's one thing to win over 20,000 people in Milwaukee. It's another thing to win over 20,000 people in 29 other NBA arenas.
44:38 Pablo Torre? He's campaigning across the aisle.
44:40 Speaker 03 Yes. That's basically what he's doing. He's reaching across, and it's working. It's working.
44:45 Pablo Torre? We're now, we're firmly in the realm of trying to climb into the mind of someone who does not want us to see inside.
44:52 Speaker 03 You know, Pablo, there is one person I didn't talk to who could address those things, the inner psyche of Giannis Antetokounmpo, who knows him better than anybody on the face of the planet.
45:04 Speaker 03 It's his brother.
45:05 Pablo Torre? I know.
45:06 Speaker 03 You're gonna have to talk to Thanasis Antetokounmpo.
45:09 Pablo Torre? I mean, I, I guess I can totally believe that you have dragged me to this point, but it's time for us to make one more call.
45:36 Pablo Torre? So the very first thing that you need to know about the guy I'm about to call here, that he is Giannis' older brother. One of five Giannis Antetokounmpo brothers in all, four of whom, by the way, have made the NBA, which is its own incredible story. But Thanasis Antetokounmpo, crucially, is the only Giannis Antetokounmpo brother to have played alongside Giannis. Thanasis was a third stringer when they won a title together in Milwaukee in 2021, and the two are so close to this day that Thanasis still lives and works in Milwaukee right alongside Giannis, whom he calls his best friend and his partner. And so while Thanasis', two-time MVP-winning brother would not take a call from Pablo Torre
46:21 Pablo Torre? finds out, most especially during these ongoing NBA playoffs, Thanasis, I was told, actually would.
46:30 Pablo Torre? Because Thanasis and I also happen to share something very important in common: An incredible affection for the truth.
46:42 Speaker 02 One of my nicknames is Truth Teller, because if you don't tell the truth, if you don't say it the way it is, they won't listen to you.
46:50 Pablo Torre? And this is a lesson, it turns out, that Thanasis has been heating at home with Giannis and in locker rooms around the NBA, and also now on his own podcast, which he titled "Thanalysis", which is, you know, a pretty good name, gotta admit.
47:05 Pablo Torre? And so, at this point, I just decided to ask Thanasis straight up about the truth behind "Bricken for Chicken".
47:15 Speaker 02 Is that the one with the free throws? If they miss free throws, you get the chicken?
47:18 Pablo Torre? Bricken for Chicken.
47:19 Speaker 02 Bricken for Chicken? Wow. You know, one time, we actually was looking at the Jumbotron, I was trying to get our phones to get the scanner to get the same discount, too.
47:30 Pablo Torre? Which you may now recall from earlier in this episode with Amin, when we talked about that game where Giannis somehow had a cellphone on the bench, was trying to scan that QR code off the Jumbotron to get free chicken alongside everybody else in the building. And this memory...
47:47 Pablo Torre? Gotham ass is thinking about a different game. Actually, from a few years ago. In Atlanta.
47:56 Speaker 03 You want to hear a story? We come in and this had to be 2022 or 2021. One of those years. We come in third, the unit, third string. We come in, you know, trying to finish the game, you know, as always, not the best. You know, sometimes sloppy, sometimes it's okay, you know, just not the best. Time to be in, but I'll take it, you know, I'm blessed. I'll take whatever I can get. 11 different Atlanta Hawks players have scored here tonight. With the Nasis going for his first points. So I'm shooting the free throws and I missed the first one and everybody's going ballistic. And I'm like, what? I look around. Like, why is everybody so hyped?
48:31 Speaker 06 And as you could hear, it's getting very loud because it is foul time.
48:35 Speaker 03 And then I hit the second free throw. I hear this, oh, deflation.
48:42 Speaker 03 No chicken for you. Shut up. And then I was like, why is everybody? What did I do? Why is everybody was everybody like boring and yelling? It's like, no, it was free food. That's why.
48:52 Speaker 06 Had a Kubro's depriving these Atlanta people of much needed nourishment.
48:59 Pablo Torre? Was any part of you, the Nasis?
49:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:02 Pablo Torre? If you were aware, if you were aware of the free food you could have given that city?
49:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:08 Pablo Torre? Is there any part of you that was like, man?
49:12 Pablo Torre? I wonder what it would feel like if I missed the second one?
49:14 Speaker 03 No, a part of me would have said, make both and I'll buy you guys dinner. I'm not missing a free throws, man. Dinner's on me, it's okay. You know, I'd rather make my free throws.
49:23 Pablo Torre? Well, this is, this is the thing I'm fascinated by is that the crowd is trying to root you on.
49:29 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:30 Pablo Torre? But the opposite, right? They're trying to, they're actively trying to get you to miss because the free food thing is a magical lure. What I'm curious about is whether you're aware of how much free chicken your brother Yanis has won people around the NBA.
49:48 Speaker 03 So I'll tell you this, they usually free throws, those free throws come in the clutch. In the clutch, he makes them. Like he's never, he doesn't miss in the clutch. Uh, maybe in the beginning, they don't have that offer in the beginning of the, in the, in the game. So I don't know specifically, but I would assume these are definitely giving out like food. Definitely.
50:07 Pablo Torre? This is the funny thing, okay?
50:09 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
50:10 Pablo Torre? In the past two NBA seasons.
50:11 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:12 Pablo Torre? Giannis has had ten chicken-eligible free throws.
50:16 Speaker 03 Okay.
50:16 Pablo Torre? Okay? So this is the second crucial free throw with chicken on the line. We call them chicken-eligible free throws.
50:23 Speaker 03 Okay.
50:24 Pablo Torre? And he's had ten of them, and he has missed eight of them.
50:30 Speaker 03 So what do you mean? So he gave eight of them, he gave chickens, chicken, big and chicken to people. Oh, that's it, he's a philanthropist. That's good, that's amazing, man. Who doesn't love a free chicken?
50:40 Pablo Torre? He is the league leader in chicken-eligible conversion rate. No one has given the NBA more free chicken in that way than your brother. He is the Robin Hood of free chicken.
50:56 Speaker 03 Wow. That's good, I'm gonna tell him that, I'm gonna tell him that. But, you know, I'm afraid if I tell him, he's gonna not miss now. He's gonna think about it and not give no more free chicken. So I'm not gonna say anything, I'm just gonna let it rock. I'm just gonna let it ride.
51:08 Pablo Torre? What's just funny is that, like, the love you get, though. Like, so we went through and just watched what it's like when you miss the second free throw, and you do, when your brother does, what you refuse to do because you sank that second one. Man, it is like they would have voted him for president.
51:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:25 Pablo Torre? It's just, it's an amazing thing.
51:27 Speaker 03 Even though he's not American, it was just crazy.
51:30 Pablo Torre? Yeah, we can get, we're living in crazy times, man. That doesn't really matter anymore, we can do whatever we want. But here's the funny thing. I am now curious. Do you think there's any part of your brother in his mind,
51:44 Speaker 03 Yeah.
51:44 Pablo Torre? deep in his brain that is hearing the applause and is thinking to himself,
51:51 Pablo Torre? "Maybe I should just miss the second one"?
51:53 Speaker 03 No, I don't think, he's just like me, no, he's not missing anyone. I'm not gonna lie to you, he's just like me. I don't think he thinks that. He's so zero Dean, and when I say zero, he's so laser-focused that he's thinking like, "I'm gonna make two free throws and it is what it is. I'm gonna do my best in my ability to make them."
52:07 Pablo Torre? The statistic, I have to follow up on that, though, to continue this investigation, is that we also tracked Giannis' free throw percentage when it came to other types of food that were on the line in promotions, okay? So the non-chicken foods.
52:24 Speaker 03 Okay.
52:25 Pablo Torre? Non-chicken food-eligible free throws.
52:29 Pablo Torre? Over the past two seasons,
52:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:31 Pablo Torre? With non-chicken eligible shots, he made five of eight.
52:36 Speaker 03 Five of eight. He doesn't want to give people bad product. He want, he only wants to give them their, what they want the most. They want chicken. That's what they want.
52:47 Pablo Torre? I don't think there's a bigger truth you could tell Thanasus than what you just said. That people want chicken and we gotta give the people what they want.
52:56 Speaker 03 That's how you build your legend. That's how you become this phenom. Give them what they want.
53:03 Pablo Torre? Thanasus Adacumbo, a true truth teller. Thank you for solving a mystery that I, I can now finally have some peace about.
53:14 Speaker 03 Put the rest, okay? Man, thank you so much, Pablo.
53:17 Pablo Torre? Thank you.
53:18 Speaker 03 Thank you, man. Thank you. Anytime.
53:20 Pablo Torre? And at this point, there's only one thing for us left to do. It was time to summon our intrepid correspondent back into our studio for a piece of something else.
53:36 Pablo Torre? So me and Alhassan,
53:39 Pablo Torre? I, I just have one last thing to tell you, which is that thank you for, for not bricking this assignment. And as your reward, we got chicken.
53:51 Speaker 03 Okay, alright, so this is the part where I have to admit. It's not just Yanis who's crazy about chicken and free chicken giveaways.
53:57 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the least shocking twist of this story is that both of us honestly are [bleep] starving.
54:04 Speaker 03 Bones?
54:07 Pablo Torre? Ooh. Honestly, yeah.
54:10 Speaker 03 Flavorful.
54:12 Pablo Torre? I get it. I get it.
54:15 Speaker 03 Be honest, I don't know if you're doing it on purpose or not, but it's worth it.
54:18 Pablo Torre? Sometimes all we gotta do is say thanks.
54:22 Speaker 03 We have any hot sauce?
54:32 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
54:38 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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