Mr. President’s Mind: How Shane Battier Learned to Lead (and Shut the F*** Up)

LeBron called him the smartest hooper alive. Coach K called him an alien. Obama called him for a Hall-of-Fame pickup game (and a historic BBQ). But two-time NBA champion Shane Battier has been measuring the immeasurable inflection points of his career all along — from growing up "mixed, tall and poor"; to puking at Duke, guarding Kobe and witnessing LeBron's GOAT-defining game; to failing at ESPN and building a cabinet of relationships… including his therapist. Pablo cracks open the brain of the legend known as Lego, to find out if he really is human after all. Plus: Patrennessy, Laptop magazine and karaoke. Lots of karaoke. • Subscribe to "Glue Guys" with Shane Battier & Alex Smith https://www.youtube.com/@GlueGuysPodcast • The No-Stats All-Star (Michael Lewis) https://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/magazine/15Battier-t.html Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef, cooked right when you order it, with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles, side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move?

• 0:42Pablo Torre?

  QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska, and California. And for delivery, fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  Onnit's Black Friday Sale doesn't start until later this month, but listeners get in early. If you're new to Onnit, go to Onnit.com and use code PABLO for 30% off your first order, starting today. If you've never tried Onnit, start with AlphaBrain. It's their daily nootropic built to support focus, memory, and mental clarity on days when you need to be locked in, whether that's powering through a tough workout or staying focused during back-to-back meetings. Get early access and save 30% off your first order at Onnit.com. That's O-N-N-I-T dot com. And use code PABLO. Some exclusions apply.

• 1:54Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach, and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools.

• 2:36Pablo Torre?

  It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:16Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:24Pablo Torre?

  I love when a guest has a notebook. I do.

• 3:29Speaker 02

  I feel like such a boomer. I mean, I'm getting old. I'm 46 years old. I forget things. But if I write it down, I have notebooks upon notebooks of just maxims and quotes. If I put it in my phone, it's gone.

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  And you have the good kind of pen, too, by the way, that thin.

• 3:44Speaker 02

  Oh, the Muji pen out of Japan.

• 3:47Pablo Torre?

  That's right. That's veteran savvy.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  The finer things in life.

• 3:50Pablo Torre?

  But I wonder if you've used that Muji pen to write down at any point the quote I wanted to actually start with, which is, of course, from Mike Krzyzewski, Coach K, head coach of your Duke Blue Devils, who said this, quote, "Shane was an alien. I wanted, at the end of his career, to crack his head open and see if he was really human." End quote.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  I think that's a compliment. Pablo, I was psycho. I was a psycho, a psychotic, neurotic person in my time at Duke.

• 4:39Speaker 02

  When Coach K recruited me, I was part of a very talented recruiting class, number one class in the country, Elton Brand, William Avery, right? Chris Burgess.

• 4:47Pablo Torre?

  I grew up watching you guys.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Right, and we were going to a team that had, at the time, 10 McDonald's All-Americans. We had 10, 10, which is crazy. So you're saying like, why would you go to a team that has 10 McDonald's All-Americans? And Coach K, people always ask me, like, what's so great about Coach K? Coach K can peer into your soul and know what button to push.

• 5:09Speaker 03

  Finding the heart of the team is huge. I call it a spirit. He has a different spirit. Once we get him in our program, I have to give him some more latitude where he feels comfortable in instinctively following that spirit.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  And he knew this when I was in high school. So he came into my living room and he said, you know, "Hey Shane, I'm not going to promise you playing time. I'm not going to promise you shots. I'll promise you one thing, the opportunity to earn playing time every single day. And if you're good enough to play." So he had me hook, line and sinker. And I'm like, "I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you and I'm going to make you play me."

• 5:51Pablo Torre?

  You're going to stab people's eyeballs with that fine ballpoint Muji pen?

• 5:55Speaker 02

  I would. I would have. I would have. I used to throw up before every game.

• 5:59Pablo Torre?

  Every game?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Every game. My freshman year, I started and literally, I'm going out to the jump ball circle. I'm so anxious, I want to play well so bad, I would run back to the, run back to the bench, grab a Gatorade towel, throw up in it, throw it back out, and then they'd toss the ball.

• 6:17Pablo Torre?

  And just to be extra clear about this, Shane Battier barfing his ambitions into a towel before every game as a 6'8" Duke freshman was a thing that pretty much everybody who cared about him found intensely unsettling, I am told. And this was true of his college girlfriend, who was now his wife, and it was true of then Duke assistant coach Quinn Snyder, who is now the head coach of the Atlanta Hawks. Although...

• 6:47Pablo Torre?

  There was one notable exception.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  I think Coach K loved it because he's like, it matters to him. He cares. But Quinn Snyder was like, this is not healthy. You cannot do this. And so he literally would breathe with me.

• 7:01Pablo Torre?

  Breathe?

• 7:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, breathe. He's like Shane, breathe, breathe, breathe.

• 7:06Pablo Torre?

  But when it comes to barf, the first thing that I personally think about when I think about Shane, whose brain, by the way, not unlike Coach K, I also plan to just crack open here, is a different liquid. And it dates back to the first time that I ever met Shane, which was at a bar during the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, about maybe a decade ago, which would be around sometime after he played pickup with Barack Obama, which we'll discuss, and probably also around when he was just winning championships with LeBron James, who would call Shane, quote, "The number one smartest basketball player and person I've been around," end quote.

• 7:52Pablo Torre?

  But that night, during that conference, Shane Battier introduced me to something else.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  It's a magical mixture of alcohol that was introduced to me by my teammate in Miami, Greg Oden, who learned this drink from Beast Mode himself, which is totally on brand, and that drink is called Patronacy.

• 8:17Pablo Torre?

  And what I found out that night is that Patronacy is exactly what you think it is, and exactly what Marshawn Lynch apparently envisioned. Half Patron, half Hennessy.

• 8:31Pablo Torre?

  Which is why I also found out that drinking Patronacy made me feel like Shane Battier during his freshman year.

• 8:39Speaker 02

  And so we were bonded from that moment on. I mean, you look at me, I look at you, and the first thought is Patronacy.

• 8:46Pablo Torre?

  And just to clarify here, by the way, I did not grow up dreaming of a bond with this man. As I said, I grew up watching Shane take charges, slap floors, become a champion at Duke, and the national player of the year, and a three-time defensive player of the year. But he went to Duke. And after the Memphis Grizzlies, the god awful Memphis Grizzlies drafted Shane, sixth overall in 2001, I mostly forgot about him. I think most people did. But in 2009, no less than Michael Lewis wrote a seminal article about Shane Battier for the New York Times Magazine.

• 9:31Pablo Torre?

  And this article had an unforgettable headline. The No Stats All-Star. Because Shane, at this point, was a 30-year-old glue guy, a nerdy glue guy, grinding away for the Houston Rockets. And what Michael Lewis basically did was make the case for why this relatively minor character, who had this vomitously maniacal devotion to defense, to frustrating the most unstoppable scorers in the world, actually represented the modern evolution of sports culture writ large. Shane was analytical. He avoided taking two-point shots because of their inefficiency.

• 10:15Pablo Torre?

  And also...

• 10:17Speaker 02

  When the story first came out, I had mixed emotions. I'm not gonna lie.

• 10:20Pablo Torre?

  Well, you see the headline.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:22Pablo Torre?

  And it's like...

• 10:23Speaker 02

  It's the biggest backhanded compliment you can get. You know, it's Michael Lewis. So like, Michael...

• 10:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Mr. Moneyball.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  That article has generated, you know, a lot of money for me over the years. You know, my speaking career and podcasts. It's so like, I... It was my opus, and I would not be here without Michael. And so, at the time, when you're, you know, I was still, what, probably eight years into my career, you know, I still thought I was a really good player and more than just like a glue guy. But now I love it. And now I love that that's my reputation. That was always authentically who I was, right? So like, Lewis hit it right in the head. That's how I was from kindergarten all the way to my last day in the NBA. So I'm very proud of that moniker. It's super nerdy, but I'm nerdy. So it's all good.

• 11:12Pablo Torre?

  The embedded sort of premise of the No Stats All-Star

• 11:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 11:15Pablo Torre?

  is that in ways that cannot be actually quantified, but can be begun to be detected by the most advanced... Metrics. So it's really the advanced math all-star more than it is the no stats all-star.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:30Pablo Torre?

  I want to just quote the thing about you that Daryl Morey, who is now, of course, president of the 76ers, a fellow PTFO guest, as is Michael Lewis. This is all very incestuous. I want to just quote Daryl. Daryl says, quote, "I call him Lego. When he's on the court, all the pieces start to fit together and everything that leads to winning that you can get to through intellect instead of innate ability, Shane excels in. I'll bet he's in the 100th percentile of every category." So again, familiar compliment insult, sort of like layer cake. Instead of innate ability. There was something that you were great at that was kind of ineffable. Give us the, the sort of like, the gallery of people that Shane Battier had to puke into

• 12:16Pablo Torre?

  his towel to sort of contemplate defending.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  A house of horrors. The best thing that happened to me my rookie year was I played two-guard. So here I am out there, I'm guarding Iverson, I'm guarding Paul Pierce, I'm guarding Ray Allen, I'm guarding Kobe.

• 12:32Speaker 04

  The ball comes in, Kobe's got it. Above the three-point line, taking a little bit of time, one dribble, pull-up. Kobe, and he's got it!

• 12:39Speaker 02

  And they kicked my ass my rookie year. But I learned, you know, I learned so much. I learned so much. I learned angles, I learned how to use my height, I learned how to be physical, and that was the best instructor for me. And so, look, I took a great pride in catching all those guys. Carmelo.

• 12:56Speaker 04

  It's Carmelo against Battier. This defense has been a story. Battier's defense, that is, against Carmelo, inside.

• 13:03Speaker 02

  KD.

• 13:04Speaker 04

  Drives on Battier, throws it down! Kevin Durant!

• 13:08Speaker 02

  You name it. I played against the greatest players of my generation, and I miss that anxiety. All right, guarding Kobe Bryant is [bleep] scary. I never will forget the feeling of getting on the bus at the Marina Del Rey Ritz. And it's like a 45 minute ride to Staples Center. And I'm just thinking to myself, this guy's trying to embarrass me. Like, I know, like, I know he's just like, he's lathered right now. And he wants to score 80 points on me tonight. Like, and so like, that anxiety was real, right? And so I call it productive paranoia. Instead of being like, paralyzing, I use that to be like, man, I better know everything about Kobe that there is to know about him. And so that like, that like, I tried to learn and threw myself in the data analytics and, and just learn Kobe better than Kobe knew himself.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Body on Kobe Bryant, following the game plan, the strategy, contesting every shot, not giving him a wide open look, fighting through screens. You talk about when he goes up, you go up as a defender. Doing an outstanding job of not surrendering an inch. Shane Battier says, hey, I stay the course.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  And it allowed me to stay in the game. And I understood, okay, I'm not gonna stop these guys, but I can be a human yellow light and slow them down a little bit. And that was my only goal, just be the human yellow light.

• 14:41Pablo Torre?

  This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases, like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.

• 15:12Pablo Torre?

  Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence, and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box: The Dell XPS 13 Laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting-edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long-lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds, and Intel Core processors, it's fast, reliable, and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards,

• 15:56Pablo Torre?

  fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now, for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 16:20Pablo Torre?

  I'm pretty sure this won't shock anyone out there, but buying a car is just a hard process. You have to figure out what you want from thousands of options, then you have to find somewhere that's offering a good deal, then you get hit with unexpected fees. But let's just break it down, and think about how you describe your ideal car to a friend. You know, something like, "Good gas mileage, four-wheel drive, reliable, under 30 grand." Luckily, CarGurus makes it that easy. Just describe it to CarGurus the same way. With Guru, you search in your own words and you get listings, real listings, that match. No endless filters, just the car that fits your life. CarGurus also helps you shop with more transparent pricing, allowing you to see when dealer fees are included

• 17:04Pablo Torre?

  so you can compare listings with greater confidence. And with more than 4 million listings, CarGurus has the biggest selection of cars. So it's easier than ever to find the right car, and the right deal. It is no wonder CarGurus is the number one most-visited car shopping site according to SimilarWeb's estimated traffic data. So buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at cargurus.com. Go to cargurus.com to make sure your big deal is the best deal. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S dot com. Cargurus.com.

• 17:42Speaker 06

  With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 18:13Pablo Torre?

  The whole thing of like, I'm gonna slow you down, but I know I'm not gonna stop you.

• 18:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:18Pablo Torre?

  Right? When it came to why these guys, as much as they would talk about how, you know, we're not afraid of Shane Battier.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 07

  Does it feel different facing this team with Battier gone? You guys had a lot of classic matchups throughout the years.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, I mean, yeah, I guess, I guess.

• 18:36Pablo Torre?

  The stats actually indicate like, yo, you slowed down.

• 18:41Speaker 02

  I wasn't bad.

• 18:42Pablo Torre?

  You slowed down at the yellow light?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  As it turned out, it turned out it wasn't that bad.

• 18:46Pablo Torre?

  Is there an element of this that is teachable?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz I, I had the answer to the test before I took it. Like, in the NBA, everyone overestimates how good of a 20-foot jump shooter they are. A 20-foot jump shot is a really hard shot to shoot, especially if you dribble once. It's like a 40% shot. That's a tough shot. And people will argue with me, oh, no, it's part of the game. You can't, no, that is a hard shot for even the best player, unless your name is Steph Curry or Kevin Durant. All right, Devin Booker. And the one thing that, you know, I was able to do that a lot of people can't do, I detached myself from the outcome. I didn't, I didn't care. I didn't care if a guy made a shot or not. I really didn't. I cared where they took that shot. And I knew if they took the shot in the wrong area,

• 19:33Speaker 02

  in the area where they, they struggled the most, given enough time, sample size, they would beat themselves. And so I just had to like sort of lead them to that, that conclusion. And so you can teach somebody kind of the squares in the court where it's just hard to make a shot.

• 19:51Speaker 04

  A two over Battier. Rebound by Bynum.

• 19:54Pablo Torre?

  Relentless pressure. He's gonna put that on you every single possession. And you know what? You gotta give Shane Battier a lot of credit. When you look back at how you got to be this way, that's the part where I'm like, I don't know if you can really teach that.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Look, I grew up in a middle-class part of Detroit. All right, I was very poor. You know, the roof leaked when it rained. I remember what a government cheese sandwich tasted like. I had patches on my jeans and all my clothes. Like, we had, like, no money. You know, I learned the phrase, "Rob Peter to pay Paul", like, when I was in kindergarten. All right, we were very, very poor. I was the only kid in town that had a black dad and a white mom. So in an elementary school of 500 kids, I was the only black kid. Okay, I got a pick on pitcher day when I was got a comb. Okay, and Martin Luther King Day, I was expected to know everything about black culture from the dawn of civilization. And I was a foot taller than everybody else. Okay, so I was the kid who had always had to carry a birth certificate with him at the Little League game. So like, I was an outcast wherever I went. So I was mixed, tall, and poor.

• 20:55Speaker 02

  The only place I really felt at home was at recess. And playing kickball, and playing dodgeball, and playing basketball, and baseball, all the sports. And I realized, like, when I helped my friends win, like, I'm not, I'm no longer the poor kid, the mixed kid, the tall kid. All right, I'm just the kid who helped my friends win.

• 21:15Speaker 02

  So I didn't, I didn't care, like, about what I did or how I looked. All I cared about is, did we win? And did I help my friends win? So I'm gonna, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. Do whatever it takes to make sure my friends look good and that we win.

• 21:30Speaker 02

  I took that lesson from kindergarten. So it was born out of desperation. It was born out of just, hey, I wanna be loved, I wanna be accepted. And it's, it's, that's what put the dog in me, to, to just be just intense and paranoid and all those things.

• 21:49Pablo Torre?

  I find that a big learning that people hopefully have had about the nerd as a creature in American life is that the nerd can be among the most competitive people that you've ever imagined.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:04Pablo Torre?

  The guy who, and again, and this is me fact-checking as a journalist, the guy who had a subscription to Laptop Magazine?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm a gadget whore. But, you know.

• 22:18Pablo Torre?

  There was a magazine called Laptop Magazine? I mean, this is just depth that I, I'm obviously somebody who is, this is a judgment-free zone, but I didn't know there was a laptop magazine.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  We share an insatiable curiosity.

• 22:34Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 22:34Speaker 02

  Now, that, like, knowing your story, that was my secret power. I was so scared that there, the answer is out there, I just haven't found it yet.

• 22:44Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, I subscribed to Laptop Magazine because they had all these new gadgets come out and I said, oh shit, like, maybe this could be the answer to like, to change my life, right? Again, that was my superpower in the NBA. Like, I don't know how to guard Kobe Bryant, like, well, maybe if I, if I learn this about him, like, it'll help me.

• 22:59Pablo Torre?

  No, but the whole idea of like, winning over a room, right? Which is embedded in the premise of culture, which is to say that like, it needs buy-in.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:08Pablo Torre?

  You need to convert people to the thing that you revere.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 23:12Pablo Torre?

  How hard was that, uh, for you in these locker rooms?

• 23:16Speaker 02

  When I go to the Grizzlies, they had the lowest winning percentage of the four North American professional sports leagues, okay? They had a 20 winning percentage.

• 23:27Pablo Torre?

  That's a good stat.

• 23:27Speaker 02

  They won one out of every five games in the, the history of their, for the franchise, okay? So you talk about a franchise that had like, no idea how to win, this is the Grizzlies. So, we lose our first 10 games, you know, we're on a bad team, I think we're like 2-15.

• 23:43Speaker 08

  Their style has not been good, they have stumbled along the way. They have not had their productivity out of their scores, they have been passive at the point. And they've lost 11 in a row. A lot of work to be done here in Memphis.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  We call like, the, the most overhyped, overused term in pro sports, the players-only locker room meeting.

• 24:06Pablo Torre?

  Oh god.

• 24:07Speaker 02

  It's the worst.

• 24:08Pablo Torre?

  I want to, I've, I've, I've been fascinated by this ritual.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  A lot.

• 24:12Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so explain, for those not familiar with why this is a thing, please explain the thing.

• 24:21Speaker 02

  So a players only meeting only happens when you're, you know, you're getting heat from the media, the fans are on you. All right, look, you know, you're not playing well. Okay. So, you know, all the movies, you know, say, you know, you know, the captains, the veterans, they call a players only meeting, we're going to air our grievances and we're going to have a kumbaya moment and that's going to propel us to, to, to better performance. Okay. And so during this particular locker room meeting, you know, here I am, you know, full of righteousness coming from Duke, the coach K. Way.

• 24:52Pablo Torre?

  Yep.

• 24:53Speaker 02

  And I'm the first one to stand up and I say, you know, I gotta be honest, the veteran leadership on this team sucks. Very honest, very direct. And they said, hey, Duke boy, shut the up, go sit in the corner. Who are you? And I was just like, oh man, I did not read the room. It humbled me and I realized like, man, I can't come in here guns blazing because there's, there's kind of like an ethos and a creed and a kind of unspoken locker room path you gotta take to earn credibility. And I, and I hadn't done that to that point. And so I shut my ass, I went to work, right? But I didn't, I didn't become cynical, I didn't

• 25:35Speaker 02

  become jaded. I wouldn't allow that locker room to change me. So I kept working and a funny thing happened, like the guys who maybe were on the fence and didn't know how to, how to act and how to win, started to have like, like winning attitudes and like winning behaviors. And all of a sudden, like you kind of feel the, the locker room kind of, kind of shift a little bit and we started to believe a little bit. And Hoobie Brown comes in the next year, we start winning some games. Memphis now 26 and 31 since that 0 for 13 start. The team that was once an easy out now holds the key in the Western Conference playoff race. It was pretty awesome to be part of. I'd never been part of like a culture change.

• 26:14Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. But this is a mythical concept of like, how do you change culture is a thing that every business is going to have to grapple with at some point if they meet what is more likely than not, which is failure.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Yep. It's, it's not the, the rah rah speeches. All right. It's, it's not the, the sayings on the wall. It's, it's the small subtle acts that most people don't even pay mind to. It's, it's the unmeasurable. It's the unmeasurable.

• 26:48Pablo Torre?

  Which is all to say that there are these inflection points in Shane Battier's life when he has had to decide whether it is time for him to take the microphone or not.

• 27:01Pablo Torre?

  And this can be a difficult political exercise for somebody who loves karaoke as much as Shane Battier does, as we need to explain in a bit. But this takes us to a moment, for now, on the court, when the human yellow light wasn't actually trying to slow down a superstar.

• 27:25Pablo Torre?

  Because it was June 2012, and Shane was playing for the Miami Heat, and the Miami Heat, for those not familiar, fetishize culture more than any other team in sports, as our own Ryan Cortez will gladly tell you, and it's to the point where the Heat would go on to later hire Shane as an executive. But on this June evening in 2012, what Shane Battier was mostly trying to do was just not get in the way of one of his fellow starters.

• 27:55Pablo Torre?

  The issue, however, was that LeBron James, one of the best scorers ever, obviously, who was now being given the greenest possible light, had won zero titles at this point. Speaking of measurables, LeBron had joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami, only to be humiliated by Dallas in the finals the year before this. And so here the Heat were, in 2012, overhyped and trailing in one of the most tense Eastern Conference Finals in memory, and they were about to be eliminated by their most hated rival.

• 28:43Speaker 02

  They're saying, "Look, there's no way the Heat are gonna win this game."

• 28:55Pablo Torre?

  David slaying Goliath.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Yes. We know if we lose game six, this is like maybe the most failed experiment.

• 29:02Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Highly publicized failed experiment and there's blood on everybody's hands.

• 29:07Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. And by the way, there's just salivating from everybody who talks about sports. Because you guys are villains. You guys are Goliath. Again, that's the other key part of this is that it's what does Goliath do to save his own ass?

• 29:19Speaker 02

  They drove the hearse to TD Bank Arena that night. But like, before that game, there wasn't like a huge rah rah speech. It was just like, look, we just gotta be ourselves. We've been through the fire and there was a trust.

• 29:32Pablo Torre?

  What was LeBron like? Because this is now, in terms of his character study.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  The LeBron game.

• 29:39Pablo Torre?

  Yes. And also like, hadn't done it. Exactly.

• 29:43Speaker 02

  That was the inflection point for his entire Hall of Fame career.

• 29:47Pablo Torre?

  The story of his life is so different if that game goes differently.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  Different. No one realizes that. And so like, of anybody, LeBron knows like, he has the most at stake.

• 29:58Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  The most.

• 29:59Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 30:00Speaker 02

  The most. And so like, he was very calm that day. He didn't say.

• 30:05Pablo Torre?

  He didn't puke into a towel?

• 30:06Speaker 02

  No, no. But like, let me tell you what, when that motherfucker has that look, man, let's go. It's like when Adam turns into He-Man.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  There was almost like an aura around him. We're just like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable.

• 30:36Pablo Torre?

  I remember watching this game.

• 30:38Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 30:39Pablo Torre?

  And imagining what must it be like to be around him in this moment?

• 30:44Speaker 02

  You didn't talk about it. You didn't look at him. You're just like, I don't want to jinx it.

• 30:51Speaker 09

  Thirty in the first half, these are all second half. The one foot step back and then the little floater as he posts up Rondo at the elbow. And then the 17 foot catch, that jab step, jump shot game.

• 31:07Speaker 02

  And so we win the game and

• 31:09Pablo Torre?

  You win big.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  We win big.

• 31:10Pablo Torre?

  By the way, like curb stomping suffocation.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:14Pablo Torre?

  Big.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:15Pablo Torre?

  Cause the final score is 98 to 79.

• 31:18Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:19Pablo Torre?

  LeBron, for the record, right?

• 31:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:21Pablo Torre?

  Do you remember his stat line?

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Cause Forty-five.

• 31:23Pablo Torre?

  Forty-five minutes, 45 points, 19 of 26.

• 31:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:27Pablo Torre?

  19 of 26.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Ridiculous.

• 31:30Pablo Torre?

  Also, by the way, 15 rebounds, throwing five assists, you know, casually.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  I mean, it's the greatest game I've ever seen anybody play.

• 31:38Pablo Torre?

  It's a hard argument to beat.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  It was, given the stakes, given the gravity of the situation, given like the, the, the historical implications, historical.

• 31:47Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna be arguing Jordan versus LeBron forever. And this game is the reason why it's plausible.

• 31:55Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm always going with LeBron for a simple reason, for a simple reason.

• 31:59Pablo Torre?

  Is it because you scored eight points that game?

• 32:02Speaker 02

  LeBron did something twice that Jordan I don't think could have done once. He won two NBA titles with Shane Battier as a starting power forward. No way, no way Jordan, no way Jordan could have done that. As great as Jordan was, LeBron dragged me across the finish line.

• 32:17Pablo Torre?

  The albatross had never been so heavy.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  That is, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

• 32:29Pablo Torre?

  Cozy makes furniture for the part of life that nobody warns you about. Getting the couch into the room, making the room feel like you, then actually living on it spills it all. With Cozy, your home can grow with you by adapting to new spaces, new styles, and every era of your life. It's modular furniture, so you can actively adjust your furniture to fit any space. It's all built around making the entire home comfortable and easy so that your stuff works with your life, not around it. The covers are washable and interchangeable, so a refresh is only one wash away. And the spill goes from panic to shrug. And it all ships to your door in easy to move boxes. Plus, Cozy's free one-on-one design consultations make the whole home vision a lot less intimidating.

• 33:11Pablo Torre?

  Cozy has everything you need to make your home feel like it has a plan because Cozy makes every part of the process easy. So visit Cozy today, that's C-O-Z-E-Y dot com and make yourself at home. Life in 2026 is tough. We all have our struggles and we could all use some help. But trying to figure out how to get the right mental health treatment for you can feel overwhelming. Talkiiatry helps you move from "I know I need help" to actually having a psychiatrist who listens and a clear personalized treatment plan. Talkiiatry is 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses,

• 33:52Pablo Torre?

  and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, and more. With Talkiiatry, you can meet with a licensed psychiatrist, who takes the time to understand what's going on, builds a personalized treatment plan, and supports you over time with consistent, evidence-based care. And all 800-plus clinicians are in-network with major insurers, so you can use your existing insurance instead of paying monthly subscriptions or out-of-network costs. Head to talkiatry.com/ptfo to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's T-A-L-K-I-A-T-R-Y dot com slash P-T-F-O to get matched in minutes. Talkiatry.com slash P-T-F-O.

• 34:38Pablo Torre?

  Did you know over 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated? And 90% don't get enough potassium, which is a key electrolyte responsible for energy, muscle function, and clear thinking? Well, that's why you can be drinking water all day and still feel tired or foggy or just off. And while most hydration packs really load up on the sugar, Instant Hydration contains zero sugar. There's no glucose spike and no sugar crash. And that is really important to me, because it not only gives me electrolytes without loading me up with sugar, but it also helps me avoid that late afternoon crash. You know, that time of day when your eyes start drooping as you reply to yet another email and you need something to get you back on track. Just mix a packet of Instant Hydration with water,

• 35:22Pablo Torre?

  and I am feeling ready to push through to the end of the day. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to instanthydration.com/ptfo and use my promo code PTFO for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's Instant Hydration's best offer available. That's instanthydration.com/ptfo, promo code PTFO.

• 35:50Pablo Torre?

  Now that we've gone through one of the glorious chapters, do you remember the most humiliated you ever felt in the league?

• 35:57Speaker 02

  My last year. My last year. When I was told, without being told, that our best chance of winning doesn't include you, Shane. When Spo started to sit me in the fourth quarter. Nothing was worse to me than sitting me in crunch time. That was my identity. And it hurt me to my core, and that's when I knew I was done. I was embarrassed. I was embarrassed. And I checked out, and I was cynical. And so when I retired, I was very cynical. And so I was sad, but I was also very cynical.

• 36:32Pablo Torre?

  What does cynicism mean at this point in your trajectory?

• 36:36Speaker 02

  I shut people out. I was probably battling some depression. I didn't know what depression was. I never had this feeling before. But feeling very isolated. I didn't feel anyone understood what I was going through. I felt very alone, and I pushed people away. I pushed my wife away. I pushed my kids away. And I just was a jerk. I wasn't doing destructive things. It wasn't like I was drinking every night. But I was emotionally unavailable. And I was hurt, and I was pissed off. And I had all these emotions I had never associated with basketball. And it was a big mistake to go work for ESPN. I was really bad on TV. You could probably go on Awful Announcing and say.

• 37:18Pablo Torre?

  Oh, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna find some Shane Battier.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  I was.

• 37:21Pablo Torre?

  Lowlights here.

• 37:22Speaker 02

  I had, I had zero passion for it. Zero. Congratulations. Your father was a great point guard for the Russian national team. What has he meant to your career?

• 37:31Speaker 10

  Oh, I think now he watch, he was this, he was raft. Like, a lot of emotion they have, so same like me.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Well, that's great.

• 37:41Pablo Torre?

  But at this point in our episode.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:43Pablo Torre?

  Everybody listening understands how insane that is.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:46Pablo Torre?

  That you, guy they've been listening to, tell stories with this level of alacrity.

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:51Pablo Torre?

  Couldn't do that.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 37:53Pablo Torre?

  Because of this internal, was it, was it, was this the hearse? Was this finally you being like, I guess I gotta get in this thing now?

• 38:05Speaker 02

  I, I was chasing relevance. When you, when you retire, like, you don't know. This is, this is all I knew. It's all I knew. Thirty years, right? I had purpose every day, right? The scoreboard above me and told me where I was, alright? I love my teammates. I love being part of a team, right? The money was great, you know? I, I had status. I had all these things that like, like people are chasing these things in their professional life. I had, I checked every box. So to not have that, when you wake up one day, because you don't have the jersey, you don't have the locker room, you don't have the purpose, scary as shit.

• 38:41Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 38:41Speaker 02

  I was, I was terrified. I was terrified.

• 38:44Pablo Torre?

  There's one quote that I remember, uh, you giving at one point, and it was, if you had filet mignon every single night, you'd stop tasting it.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 38:54Pablo Torre?

  Which is to say that even though you missed so actively the thing that you weren't doing anymore.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:00Pablo Torre?

  It felt like, um, by the end also, your, your ability to enjoy it.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 39:06Pablo Torre?

  Was also changing, which is an interesting tension of like, missing something that wasn't even the thing that, for you, it, it was anymore.

• 39:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It's weird, it's a weird feeling. It was a weird, it was a weird time. I went through a lot of, who am I? Who am I? My identity was so tied to basketball. It was tied to the No Stat All-Star stuff.

• 39:28Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  Right? So like, I, in a lot of ways, I felt like I was an actor in my own life. That I had to only take, like, I couldn't turn it over. I couldn't take two-point shots.

• 39:37Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Cause I talked about it. No, literally, so I, I.

• 39:39Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I, I get it.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  So I felt like, almost like I was playing this role of this guy. And we talk about authenticity and I, I played it to the best of my ability. But I, I questioned like, who the heck am I? What, what am I about? Like, what am I doing? What am I doing? And, you know, going to ESPN and being terrible at it and, and that disaster of a year, uh, didn't help. And so, you know, I'd never been to therapy. My, my wife, you know, of, of 22 years, when we met in seventh grade, said, look, Shannon, I know you like optionality. Here's three options. You can, you know, here's the number to the Marriott. Here's the number to your attorney. And here's this number to this life coach slash psychologist that comes very highly recommended.

• 40:23Speaker 02

  I said, Heidi, I'm a very smart man. I'm gonna choose door three. And so I had to unpack a lot of crap that I just didn't deal with because I was so driven. I was, I was throwing, I was too busy throwing up. I was too busy grinding and, and just like pursuing whatever it was in the basketball career that I did not give time to. And like, not healthy at all. You know, I was not stable.

• 40:47Pablo Torre?

  Well, this is the other thing about like having a superpower in any way.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:51Pablo Torre?

  Right? Is that there is an implication that, man, look at this gift. But the more I learn about sports, the more I realize that extremity in any fashion also implies a certain imbalance if you're not extraordinarily careful.

• 41:04Speaker 02

  A hundred, a hundred percent. And I don't, I, would I do things differently? I don't know. That's the thing.

• 41:11Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  I know it wasn't healthy, but like, I never had a, like a sports psychologist when I played cause I was so scared of anyone getting inside this and taking away my superpower.

• 41:20Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 02

  Which was like my IQ and my ability to read and react. I'm like, I don't, I don't need to be thinking. I don't, I don't need to be emotive, you know, emotive here. I just need to be like a great defender and make open shots and like.

• 41:32Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 41:33Speaker 02

  I'll deal with it later.

• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  The metric, the standard of success is not a health. It is, are we winning?

• 41:37Speaker 02

  Are we winning? Am I still here? And so I don't know what I would have done differently.

• 41:43Pablo Torre?

  Did your, did you get a sense that when you got, went to therapy, that your psychologist was like? I know exactly the type of person you are? Or were they saying something that was?

• 41:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think I was out of the ordinary for a retired athlete. I think every athlete goes through some version of this, some form or fashion. And the longer you're in the game, the more work you gotta do. Right? And I describe it as, and I think this falls any, any person of success. All right, but especially young people, you know, entertainers or people who win the first third of their life. Right? When you're identified as a young talent or even an old talent, you know, you're told you're great. You know? And if you show any vulnerability, guess what? We're gonna take your dream and give it to that person because they don't show any weakness. So what do you do? You start building walls. You always have the answer. All right, you, you can't feel anything, you're, you're bulletproof. Right?

• 42:38Speaker 02

  So emotionally, psychologically, financially, sexually, like I got all the answers. I don't need any help. Give me, give me space.

• 42:46Pablo Torre?

  Just give me laptop, magazine and some space.

• 42:49Speaker 02

  I'll, I'll figure it out. And it's all good till it ain't. Right? When you don't have that purpose and you don't have that support system of the locker room and you're like, who the hell am I? Well, I've been doing it solo for so long that I don't know how to ask for help. I don't know how to, you know, so like, and what you realize is it's, it's all relationships. It's all relationships and it's being authentic in your relationships and fostering those things. So like, that's what I would have done. I would have done a better job of fostering, um, relationships and allowing people who I care about to help me along the way.

• 43:28Pablo Torre?

  When you talk about basically having these relationships, building a cabinet of people around you.

• 43:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 43:33Pablo Torre?

  I think about how you are also one of the very special, lucky people to have played basketball with a man who had his own cabinet.

• 43:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:43Pablo Torre?

  What was playing basketball against Barack Obama like?

• 43:47Speaker 02

  I was actually on his team. And so first of all, to get the, to get the call to go to the president's birthday. What's that call like? Unexpected, unexpected, a call out of the blue. Hey, what are you doing this day? Um, the president has requested you to, to play in his birthday pickup game. He's turning 49. Turning 49 and like it was, you know, Kobe was hurt by, by them, but it was Carmelo, Magic Johnson. I mean, it was like Alonzo Mourning, LeBron, D Wade, Chris, like all, like Hall of Famers. And so like. Stuff a kid would do who loved basketball and had the power to invite everybody. Yeah. And, and here I am, some schlep. The coolest part was like getting in the, the SUV. Why, why were you invited?

• 44:27Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know. I don't, I still to this day, I don't know. I don't know. They're trying to, you know, bring some, I don't know. IQ to the, the game. I don't know, but I got to play on his team. And, uh, you know, the defensive driving like Navy SEALs who drove us to the gym. That was badass. That was the coolest part. I mean, those guys were bobbing and weaving. Um, but we lose the first two games and, uh, you know, uh, President Obama says, guys, bring it in. As your commander in chief, I command you to not lose this last game. Were there hard fouls? Were there? There are no hard fouls, but there was definitely like, they were blocking a shot. And I, I think, I think, you know,

• 45:09Speaker 02

  the president appreciated that. He's, you know, he didn't, he didn't want charity. That was part of it. He, he said that. He's like, I don't want charity. All right. I want, I want everyone to play. We're, we're here to win. All right. So he, he, he got a taste. He got a taste and he hit the game when he shot and you know. He did? He hit the game when he shot. He's like this, like, like this, this kind of squirrely left hander. I've seen the footage. You know, it's, it's weird, but it goes in, it goes in and he hit the shot and he's walking around holding that, holding that thing up high. So it was an unbelievable day. The, the coolest, the funniest part was we're on the South Lawn having a barbecue.

• 45:45Speaker 02

  Birthday barbecue afterwards and you know, they got some hip hop playing, whatever. And all of a sudden a pony by Genuine comes on.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  And I'm just thinking to myself, you know, our forefathers are just rolling in their graves right now. That Genuine's pony is playing on the South Lawn. First time, first time ever that song is.

• 46:10Pablo Torre?

  Somewhere, somewhere the ghost of.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Teddy Roosevelt.

• 46:14Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, yeah, Teddy Roosevelt, Andrew Jackson.

• 46:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 46:17Pablo Torre?

  Better yet.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, just can't believe it.

• 46:20Pablo Torre?

  Ride it, my pony. My saddle's waiting. Come and jump on it. If you're horny, let's do it. Ride it, my pony.

• 46:27Speaker 02

  How great's that?

• 46:28Pablo Torre?

  I mean, that's the American dream.

• 46:29Speaker 02

  That is, it is the American dream. And my wife and I look at each other like this is on like, no one understands how wonderful this moment is.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  It's what we've worked all these years for.

• 46:42Pablo Torre?

  Exactly. When you were summoned to the front of the class to explain black history to everybody in Michigan.

• 46:49Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 46:49Pablo Torre?

  You did not have the audacity to depict this image.

• 46:52Speaker 02

  One day, I dream of barbecue on the South Lawn. And we will play pony.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  And we will all be merry.

• 47:15Pablo Torre?

  Part of what is so interesting about hearing you trace your path through, through life is that at various points, you, you have lived a, a movie that I find to be endlessly amusing. And one of the scenes that recurs is just you doing karaoke.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  First of all, who are you telling? Who are you telling? I mean, you know, when I look at my journals and writing a book now, and it's just like I.

• 47:46Pablo Torre?

  It's crazy that you've lived all of this already.

• 47:49Speaker 02

  It's Forrest Gumpian.

• 47:50Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  It really is Forrest Gumpian.

• 47:52Pablo Torre?

  You both met the president.

• 47:53Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 47:54Pablo Torre?

  Uh, you both love running.

• 47:55Speaker 02

  So I toured China. So my karaoke story in China, uh, I wore a Chinese basketball shoe called Peak.

• 48:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Okay. Cause Yao Ming was my teammate in Houston and, uh, they, they wanted a presence on the Rockets. So I went there, I never heard of the shoe. And I had like 50 foot billboards in like every city you never heard of in China. And so I was, I was very, very famous in China, much more famous in China than it was in America. So whenever I go to a, a press conference in the city when I'm touring, there would be a bunch of reporters there and they gave me the name Mr. President. Because my cadence and the way I talk and gesture was like Barack Obama. I was gonna say, your sleeves are rolled up to your elbows? This is not a coincidence. And so I would be in, you know, Qingdao and, you know, the, the press would go, "Mr. President, Mr. President, how do you find Qingdao?" And I said, "You know what? It has the most beautiful women and the best beer."

• 48:48Speaker 02

  And then I would go to- What a politician. Then I'd go to Shanghai. "Mr. President, Mr. President, how do you find Shanghai? It has the most beautiful women and the best beer." Right? But they knew I loved karaoke. And so I, I went to this beer, actually the Qingdao Beer Festival in Qingdao, China. You know, beautiful city on the, on the water. And they wanted me to sing karaoke. And so this is like a festival and I swear to you, there was like 20,000 people at this, at this festival. And they want me to sing Billie Jean. And I'm like, "All right. No, no, no biggie, I'll do it." Well, I get up on stage and so I start singing, you know,

• 49:32Speaker 02

  "She was more like a movie queen from across the scene." And all of a sudden, the, the words just cut out. And so I have no monitor. Your prompter goes dead. My prompter goes dead. The ultimate politician's nightmare. And so I'm in front of 20,000 people playing Billie Jean, you know, fumbling my way through the song, trying to dance to take the, you know, the ice off my horrible, it was a nightmare. It was a nightmare of, of epic proportions to be in Qingdao, China, in front of 20,000 people. At a beer festival. At a beer festival with no words. But they, they still cheered for me. I actually, people don't believe me. I hosted the Chinese version of SNL. What? It's called Happy Camp. They get like 100 million people. I, I can't make this up.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  They get 100 billion people a week tuning in on Saturday night. And I was the host. I don't speak a lick of Mandarin, like, at all. But again, I had a translator there on TV, and it's like, it's a comedy sketch show. And so they wanted me to come and sing karaoke, so I sang "New York, New York." You know, I came out of the, you know, doing the kick, doing the Sinatra.

• 50:36Pablo Torre?

  And yet, is that as weird as the time that you did this?

• 50:43Speaker 10

  Shane, listen to me. Just stay retired. You can still be in the league as a team front on this floor. You can have all you ever wanted. I know.

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  So this is the voice of Daryl Morey?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:03Speaker 10

  But I don't want it. No! I can't want it anymore.

• 51:21Pablo Torre?

  So Daryl as the Good Witch and Shane as Elphaba, I suppose?

• 51:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:27Pablo Torre?

  In this rendition of...

• 51:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:44Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 51:47Speaker 10

  It's late to take on Hillary. It's time to trust my instincts, close my eyes, and leave. It is time to try and fight gravity. I think I'll try and fight.

• 52:17Pablo Torre?

  I mean, Daryl wearing a blonde wig and a dress and you, I mean, when I say that you sang your heart out with a broom in one hand.

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Daryl Morey is a very close friend of mine. I wouldn't be here without him, what I learned from him. And he actually wrote that.

• 52:38Pablo Torre?

  He loves musicals.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  He loved musicals. So he and Ellen, his wife, rewrote the words to that and had an idea. So that was all Daryl's idea. And, you know, I love that he put on the Pink Linda dress. So that's an event called Batty Oki that we held in Houston, held in Miami. Raises money for my foundation, the Batty A Take Charge Foundation, giving over $4 million in scholarships.

• 53:01Pablo Torre?

  It's a remarkable thing.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  The last decade. So it's for the kids.

• 53:05Pablo Torre?

  Daryl, on the one end, did you blackmail LeBron and D Wade, the dude robbing the stick?

• 53:21Speaker 02

  That was their, that was their own volition. The Batty Oki, we don't mess around.

• 53:24Pablo Torre?

  I dare say that Mr. President has assembled a rainbow coalition of people to do the thing that you made peace with, which is humiliate yourself.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  For a good cause, you know, you can never humiliate yourself too, too much.

• 53:43Pablo Torre?

  That is also a thing that we hear Pablo Torre finds out that we believe in. Shane Battier, thank you for turning this podcast into a very happy camp.

• 53:55Speaker 02

  Pablo, you're my man. I can't wait to do patrinese with you.

• 53:59Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  When I see you next time.

• 54:00Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God. I just felt, I just felt, I just felt the need for a towel.

• 54:15Pablo Torre?

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

• 54:21Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 54:42Speaker 06

  With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.

• 55:06Speaker 11

  State Fair food is getting smaller and pricier. We'll have room for fried cookies. OK, you never overspent on food. What's your deal?

• 55:14Speaker 12

  What's his deal? He went to Metro and got $450 in value on the new Samsung Galaxy 837 5G for free and no activation fees.

• 55:23Speaker 11

  Free phone? Oh, sign me up.

• 55:25Speaker 12

  Get that more for your money feeling only on Metro by T-Mobile.

• 55:28Speaker 13

  Bring your number and activate $40 period plan. $450 based on device discount waived activation fee. Not available if with Metro T-Mobile in the best 180 days.

• 55:36Speaker 14

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet, like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone, and including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.