Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: All the President's Grizzly Men About this episode What does being Robert Pera's "co-owner" even mean? Why can't a sports executive wear his team's uniform? And what do the layoffs at The Washington Post and CBS News suggest about the business of journalism? Former Marlins president David Samson joins Pablo, one-on-one, to decode the sagas of the Memphis Grizzlies and mainstream media.
• Previously on PTFO: The Invisible NBA Owner and "Crimes Against Humanity" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk3N2U4OGY2ODllMWU4MDI2MzBlMjMx
• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson" https://pod.link/1483011704
(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and Hunterbrook Media and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:06 Speaker 01 I love your show. I love being on it, but don't overestimate.
0:11 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
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2:30 Pablo Torre? David is furiously, frantically.
2:33 Speaker 01 Well, I'm trying to track down people because you screwed up on time. And I'm very structured.
2:38 Pablo Torre? I know.
2:38 Speaker 01 And this was the window.
2:40 Pablo Torre? The window is shattered. We are holding space, as they say, for John Skipper. There's a microphone that is pointed at nothing because John is not here, despite saying he would be here.
2:55 Pablo Torre? And.
2:56 Speaker 01 I'm not taking it personally.
2:57 Pablo Torre? And now they're, Nadir is wheeling the chair.
2:59 Speaker 01 That's a bad sign. I thought he was like in the elevator.
3:04 Pablo Torre? Yeah, this is gonna be a different kind of sporting class. But it is one that I am very excited to do with you, David, because we've done this story on the show this week in partnership with Hunter Brook Media and my friend Sam Koppelman, that I've been truly curious. What does David Samson think about this?
3:20 Speaker 01 Well, let me just start with a part that you glossed over on the show that to me was spectacular because it resonated so well that someone mentioned, hey, Justin Timberlake owns the Grizzlies. And he was not too happy about that. That is a guaranteed true story. And I have like four things I want to talk about with that.
3:43 Pablo Torre? So the character, the main character of the story is Robert Para, who's the owner of the Memphis Grizzlies. He is the founder and CEO of a company called Ubiquity. Ubiquity, and I'm going to TLDR this. Please watch the episode. It is detailed and deliberate and structured and reported. And it's the product of six months of investigative journalism with Hunter Brook, doing so much good work that I just want to continue to shout them out.
4:06 Speaker 01 Is it by or with?
4:08 Pablo Torre? They did a six-month investigation. And then we added some fun stuff. Some cheese to melt on their broccoli is how I would put it, including what you just referred to, which is that.
4:17 Speaker 01 The LP story.
4:18 Pablo Torre? Well, yeah, and.
4:19 Speaker 01 I like that.
4:19 Pablo Torre? And the Tony Allen 101 stuff. And so Robert Para is the owner of the Grizzlies and nobody knows who the [bleep] this guy is. An NBA owner told Hunter Brook, you know, no one knows where their sales come from. Spoiler alert, it turns out a big chunk of them are coming from the war in Ukraine, specifically the Russian side, because through a process of essentially sanctioned circumvention.
4:46 Pablo Torre? Allegedly, they have been getting these very effective Wi-Fi routers and antenna.
4:53 Speaker 01 The dildo satellites.
4:55 Pablo Torre? The dildo satellites is how we refer to them.
4:57 Speaker 01 Very good investigation.
4:58 Pablo Torre? I mean, this is just the kind of rigor that we bring to the table. And that stuff has, according to both thank you notes from Russian soldiers, as well as in-depth undercover journalism that reveals that third-party distributors are willing to ship these devices to the warfront in Ukraine to be used by Russian soldiers, that this stuff is enabling a drone war, which has resulted in legitimate crimes against humanity, as the United Nations has called them.
5:31 Speaker 01 Did you not watch your episode thinking about Lord of War? Do you watch? So you did the episode. I don't re-watch my episodes generally, and I assume you don't have the time to re-watch once you've put them to bed and they're edited. But if you take a step back and say, wow, this is sort of Lord of War-like.
5:49 Pablo Torre? It feels cinematic in ways that are both quite entertaining and also terrifying, because modern warfare is drones. Modern warfare is reliant on technology that it turns out is most effectively produced and shipped originating from a place here in America with this company called Ubiquiti. So, anyway, that is the crimes against humanity side of the ledger. But the question of who is this guy who is now a top-five richest owner in sports, David? $30 billion.
6:29 Speaker 01 It's like you're going down the list. You're either a bomber, you're going... I think it's good to be a poor owner in the NBA, because maybe you won't get to them.
6:36 Pablo Torre? Well...
6:37 Speaker 01 Unless you get a new contract.
6:38 Pablo Torre? We are constantly, it turns out, refreshing Bloomberg's live list of the richest people on the planet. Who's here that we recognize? And Robert Parra was right there, but did not recognize him. And so the question of who is this guy? What's he like? What's his story in the NBA? It brings us to the fact that, yeah. He threatened to buy out his limited partners, which included Justin Timberlake, because he was out one night and a woman said, "Wait a minute, you're not the owner of the Grizzlies. Justin Timberlake is the owner of the Grizzlies." And this did not sit well with the guy who bought the Grizzlies for social capital.
7:13 Speaker 01 His stock could go down by 30 points. His net worth could decrease by 15 billion. And it would not impact him the way it hits incorrectly and horrifically when someone at a party, who's a woman, says, "You're the owner of the Grizzlies? I thought it was Jessica Biel's husband." That is DEFCON 1000. That's when you pick up the phone and you're calling your lawyer and you want to get rid of that partner. And I've seen this. It's happened. Two quick things. One, George Steinbrenner did not like his limited partners, and there were a lot of limited partners. And there was a time in Jeffrey Loria's life when he was offered to become a limited partner of the Yankees.
7:56 Speaker 01 And he wanted to have some power, he wanted to have some say. And what George Steinbrenner said is, "Just keep in mind, there is nothing so limiting as being my limited partner. You may not talk about it, it's like Fight Club to be a limited partner with the Yankees." And so Jeffrey and many other owners in baseball and basketball and football have taken that thought process out into the world because they all have limited partners. Even Steve Ballmer has Mr. Dennis Wong.
8:27 Pablo Torre? Yes, his one limited partner, which is special because he only has one.
8:31 Speaker 01 Which is very rare. In the old days, at a lower purchase price, 100-0 could happen, but right now, at billion-dollar and $2 billion valuations, it's a syndicate. And there's someone in charge. There's someone who puts in the most money, but so many other people get to say, "Yeah, I'm an owner."
8:48 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I own the Yankees.
8:50 Speaker 01 1%, no one asks that. No one ever follows up at a cocktail party, "Oh, you're an owner of the Marlins? Because I got this in Miami." Where I would get reports, "Wait a minute, I just met the owner of the Marlins." And it was one of Jeffrey's limited partners who would go around, and there were multiple of them, saying, "Yeah, I own the Marlins."
9:08 Pablo Torre? But it's the whole reason why you buy in, is to say it.
9:11 Speaker 01 So you can say it.
9:12 Pablo Torre? It's the, by the way, and I get it, it's the coolest thing you could own is a pro sports team because you are visible and...
9:21 Pablo Torre? In exclusive televised spaces.
9:24 Speaker 01 But think about the level of insecurity that this guy had. So the fact that someone thought Justin Timberlake, when you bring in a celebrity partner, and that's become a big thing that I learned about back when Steven Ross did it with the Dolphins. He had this whole red carpet where the Williams sisters and Marc Anthony and other people were supposedly had bought into the team and they would come to games and they'd be announced like it was the damn Oscars. And I thought to myself, there's only a certain number of owners who would ever want this sort of light to be shown upon someone other than themselves. And it turns out that number's dwindling down to zero these days. Where if you have a team, you want the world to know you've got the team.
10:01 Pablo Torre? Well, I want to recap for people who aren't somehow familiar with your backstory. You're the president of the Marlins and Jeffrey Loria, who is your?
10:11 Speaker 01 The man formerly known as my stepfather.
10:13 Pablo Torre? Correct.
10:14 Speaker 01 Close relationship with him, though, for 50 years.
10:16 Pablo Torre? And the thing that I didn't know, that I only knew because I am friends with you, is that that dude grew up loving the Yankees.
10:24 Speaker 01 Did he ever.
10:25 Pablo Torre? Which is hilarious and heartbreaking for me, a Yankee fan, because this gives new subtext to the whole, like, you guys beating the Yankees in the World Series thing. And also gives new context for him considering, should I be George Steinbrenner's limited partner?
10:41 Speaker 01 Or why we had a no beard policy? Or why we would do all these trades with the Yankees, like trade for Adeki Aribu back with Montreal and do other such trades?
10:50 Pablo Torre? That was Steinbrenner cosplay.
10:52 Speaker 01 It was a lot of, we were, we were always in touch with Cash and Randy Levine and George.
10:59 Pablo Torre? Brian Cashman.
11:00 Speaker 01 Brian, sorry, Brian Cashman, thank you, the general manager of long time.
11:03 Pablo Torre? Synonymous, though, with the purse strings of the Yankees.
11:06 Speaker 01 He's been there, well, more synonymous with purportedly making baseball moves, but they've had the same leadership forever. Randy Levine, when I left baseball, he was the most tenured president. I was second when I left in 2017 and I dropped off the list having been eliminated. But Randy Levine continues to still be the president. He's the longest tenured president. So he is the in lockstep with George and the Steinbrenner family. And the Yankees are just a funny example where they're, they do have limited partners.
11:35 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
11:36 Speaker 01 Hal Stammer does not own the entire team.
11:38 Pablo Torre? Oh, there's that dude. I've talked to you about this off air, but we can mention it now. I've been like staring at this dude, Patrick Bet-David, who is like this now right wing influencer, who is in, I think, South Florida, but he's a huge YouTuber. And in his Twitter bio, it says, uh, let me just get it because this is exactly why you buy in, despite not being the guy-
11:59 Speaker 01 Does he write limited? Does he just write owner of New York Yankees? Cause that would drive, that used to drive me crazy.
12:04 Pablo Torre? It, the first line, at Patrick Bet-David, the first line is Yankees minority owner. Baseball emoji, author of your next five moves, and then the rest of it. PBD Podcast and ValueTainment, ValueTainment is the company. Um, in case you wanted to, I don't know, claw your eyes out at some point after watching this. Um, so anyway, so I've been curious, like, oh, a Yank? I didn't, I didn't know that. And I'm a Yankee fan. That guy is a co-owner of the team.
12:30 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was, there was an opportunity to buy into the Yankees, not just, uh, he wanted to take over. And George did not want to sell. This is back when I was much younger. I was probably in my teens.
12:41 Pablo Torre? Jeffrey, no.
12:42 Speaker 01 He had an opportunity to buy the Yankees and they, the argument that he and George had was over control. What makes me smile about this Grizzlies story is that the need for relevance is supposed to come with ownership. But now what's happening is owners need, need more of it because there's a bigger universe of people who have fame. Back in the day, there was not social media. You were not competing with people without money for fame. And now there are so many people who don't have money that have fame, that the people who have the money want the fame and they need to figure out the way to do it. So this example is outstanding.
13:20 Pablo Torre? So let me give you some more context for it, because I've been doing some more reporting. The story is ongoing, by the way, and I keep on needing to say this. There is vast and serious, uh, moral implication here for what Ubiquity was doing. But the backstage power stuff that comes right into the wheelhouse of the sporting class. That's where I want to live with you today. Because what I was told was that when Robert Para was buying the Grizzlies, there was an arrangement that fell apart because ubiquity stock tanked. So he becomes, spoiler alert again, in 2012, the youngest owner in NBA history. He's in his 30s and he owns the Grizzlies. But the way that he was originally scheduled to buy the Grizzlies fell apart
14:04 Pablo Torre? because he was, he was using the valuation of his company to provide all of his financial purchasing power. And so when the ubiquity stock tanks, what I'm told is that there is a meeting and it is David Stern and Adam Silver and Robert Para and his associates. And they got to figure out, how are we going to, how are we going to get what turns out to be $159 million, which is a bargain in retrospect? But how do we get $159 million in like money, in like actual money to buy this thing? And so what David Stern outlines is that we can keep Robert Para as the controlling owner, but his percentage share is going to be reportedly, you know,
14:49 Pablo Torre? less than a third of the team. And what they do is they scrounge together a bunch of other investors. And so there's this guy, Steve Kaplan, from Oak Tree Capital Management. For those familiar with the aspiration saga, oh, there's, there's a, there's a familiar entity, Oak Tree Capital Management, Steve Kaplan. This guy, Dan Strauss, Justin Timberlake, Peyton Manning is a limited partner of the Grizzlies. And there are a bunch of local owners too, to the point where I am told, it was just like, we just got to get people with money. And so they were like tiny, can we get some local owners to combine for half a million dollars? You know, just to like meet the actual bottom line of 159 million, I am told. And so in the process, what that sets up is this.
15:35 Pablo Torre? Is this recipe for resentment when Justin Timberlake and Peyton Manning are sitting courtside bathing in the adoration of being the owners of this team, whereas the guy who was like, wait a minute, it was supposed to be me, is feeling resentful of the dynamic he has bought into.
15:52 Speaker 01 Yeah, so take a look at some of the list of limited partners for other teams. You'll find some great names like Michael Jordan with the Marlins as an example.
16:01 Pablo Torre? He was a Marlins?
16:02 Speaker 01 There are, there's a little, oh, I don't know if that's public. Yes, Michael Jordan was part of the partnership with Derek Jeter that bought the Marlins in 2017.
16:12 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, here it is, here it is.
16:14 Speaker 01 He put in a little tiny, a little tiny nothing.
16:16 Pablo Torre? Yep.
16:17 Speaker 01 And, yeah, I don't, I don't know that that was disclosed by MLB at the time, but there you have it. So it's putting together what's called a syndicate. And when you say he used the stock, the problem is that obviously you borrow money according to what potentially a stock is trading at, but there's a collar around it where it's almost like a callable loan, that if the stock falls below a certain point, hey, you better fund this with something else. And my guess is that Robert had no other source of cash. And so he went and borrowed money and using his stock as collateral. And when it no longer was able to be collateral, he had to get partners. Think back to the Red Sox, by the way. John Henry and Tom Werner, marriage of convenience.
16:59 Speaker 01 When they bought the Red Sox, they didn't come in hand in hand as partners when they were combined with Larry Lucchino. That is not how that works. So what Bud Selig and has done and Rob Manfred and David Stern and Adam Silver is they put groups together, they put people together in order to get more money available to get purchase prices increased.
17:20 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
17:21 Speaker 01 It's a very big story. We've read about the Dodgers this week, and if John were here, we'd, I mean, we could always talk about the argument of how the Dodgers got sold for so much because they got a revenue sharing deal. Which other owners did know about, by the way?
17:34 Pablo Torre? Spell that out because it's interesting.
17:35 Speaker 01 It's a very interesting story. Back when the Dodgers, Frank McCourt, if you know that name.
17:40 Pablo Torre? Parking lot magnate, Frank McCourt.
17:42 Speaker 01 Well, that's what people would call him.
17:43 Pablo Torre? That's the joke.
17:44 Speaker 01 He really did hate that. And when he saw the Dodgers, side note, kept the parking lots, might I add. But anyway, his wife, ambassador to France, Jamie McCourt, they had a terrible divorce. And they were fighting about a lot of stuff, including the Dodgers. So the Dodgers had to get sold. And Bud Selig wanted a really high purchase price on the Dodgers because that would inure its his benefit. And so he cut a deal. And now it's being reported that it was a deal cut with the bankruptcy court. And I'm telling you, Pablo, that's not how it happened. I, because I was literally there watching this happen because we had a vote on it.
18:25 Speaker 01 I was in the room voting on this deal where the Dodgers would have a price tag of over $2 billion, which would help all of us. It would increase the value of every team getting a deal on the table of 2-plus billion. And the only reason Mark Walter would pay 2-plus billion is because there was a limit to what would be subject to revenue sharing. And what that means is he was able to take money all for himself instead of sharing it with the other owners. And what he got in return is he would pay more money upfront for the team.
19:00 Pablo Torre? So.
19:00 Speaker 01 True story.
19:01 Pablo Torre? Mark Walter, by the way, who is the CEO of Guggenheim Partners, now the guy who is, you know, behind the Lakers. That was a $10 billion valuation, the new, the new high watermark. At the time, you know, and by the way, Mark Walter has one of my favorite descriptors attached to him, even more than parking lot magnate. He is famously private. And it's sort of like, well, what does he, what does that guy do? We continue to have curiosity. Jamie McCourt, by the way, was not only the ambassador appointed by Donald Trump to France, she was also the ambassador to Monaco from 2017 to 2021. So how dare you erase.
19:38 Speaker 01 Sorry.
19:38 Pablo Torre? Key function of her diplomatic responsibilities.
19:42 Speaker 01 I love Jamie. She was something else, man. I told her, don't stop fighting with Frank. I mean, that was a knock them out, drag them out nightmare divorce.
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20:33 Speaker 02 A perfect crime film, says The Daily Beast. John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Sony Pictures Classics proudly presents the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Turturro stars as an aging master pickpocket whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls "instantly classic." Opens October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30.
21:08 Speaker 04 Cash flow crunch? OnDeck's small business line of credit gives your business immediate access to funds up to $200,000 right when you need it. Cover seasonal dips, manage payroll, restock inventory, or tackle unexpected expenses without missing a beat. With flexible draws, transparent pricing, and control over repayment, get funded quickly and confidently. Apply today at ondeck.com. Funds could be available as soon as tomorrow. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
21:46 Pablo Torre? The way in which love interests factor in to all of this brings us back to the Robert Para, like, wait a minute, it was supposed to be me and not Timberlake thing. And it brings us back to the idea also that like, and this is also something that I feel comfortable reporting now. Robert Para's whole goal, when he bought the Grizzlies, was to move it to Las Vegas. Memphis, David, you know, if you were to put it in the sort of hierarchy of markets, not a particularly attractive one.
22:18 Speaker 01 Better than Green Bay and not as good as Vancouver.
22:23 Pablo Torre? Yeah, certainly less valuable than Vegas.
22:27 Speaker 01 Well, he never would get that. So a new owner, when we got in the game, we wanted to move our team to Montreal, wanted to move it to Washington, and it was never going to be allowed. So they would never, the NBA owners would never allow a newbie to take the Vegas market.
22:41 Pablo Torre? Explain that, because this is 2012, and I want to understand.
22:44 Speaker 01 Yeah, so when you, if you buy team at X and with relocation, you get a value of Y. In theory, what that means is that you've had an increase in your investment. You've made money on your money. And what owners say is, hey, you're new to this. They keep track, like, how long have you been in the game? Like, there's a list. Owned, team owned since 1990, team owned since 1992, 1978. And you can't reward a new owner with the change in value of a team that's been relocated. And what my response always was is just charge me a fee. Charge me a relocation fee for the difference.
23:19 Pablo Torre? You're saying that once an owner gets the rights to move to Vegas, the valuation of that team
23:25 Speaker 01 Is all his.
23:25 Pablo Torre? Mushrooms.
23:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, and it's all his. And what baseball did is they wouldn't allow us to move to Washington. They bought the Expos and themselves moved it to Washington and got the increase in valuation. When, when the NBA goes to Vegas, there's going to be a huge, huge expansion fee that gets split amongst the owners, not into the pocket of one of the owners. And whoever buys that team, LeBron or Shaq, who both wanted,
23:50 Pablo Torre? They've been rumored.
23:50 Speaker 01 Will pay accordingly. And it will be a multi-billion dollar franchise to start with.
23:56 Pablo Torre? So one of the fun dynamics of the, okay, I would like to move the team to Vegas thing, as, as perhaps ill-fated as that had always been because of the power dynamics you just outlined, is that the seller of the team was this guy, Michael Heasley. And Michael Heasley wanted to keep the team in Memphis. And that was one of his, it's funny when an owner is like, I want out of this, but don't leave. And so reportedly, by the way, one of the bidders, one of the people, one of the suitors for the Grizzlies at the time was Larry Ellison. Larry Ellison wanted to move the team out of Memphis. And
24:35 Speaker 01 It's called the Herb Cole Pablo. I don't know if you know that.
24:37 Pablo Torre? The Bucks.
24:38 Speaker 01 Within our industry, that's called the Herb Cole.
24:40 Pablo Torre? Please explain.
24:41 Speaker 01 The Herb Cole is when you own a team and you sell it and you claim that you are selling it to people who have guaranteed to keep the team. He didn't want Milwaukee to lose a team. And so he famously sold the Bucks and the thought was, what he was able to say is, hey, don't you worry, this team will not move. I have taken care of it. I'm even investing in the new stadium, which there is now an old arena in Milwaukee. And it's always been a joke, the Herb Cole effect, because it's not everlasting. So there is no guarantee when you say, oh, my team's not going to move out of this market. That is a promise you can never make.
25:18 Pablo Torre? That's former Senator.
25:20 Speaker 01 Yes, he is.
25:21 Pablo Torre? Herb Cole. So the thing that's funny about the purchase of the Grizzlies also is that, so like, how do you make it so that they have to stay? And I'm told that there was a poison pill inserted into the agreement, where basically if there was an application to move the team, if that was submitted to the league, what I'm told is that any of the other owners had the right to buy out the shares at that 2012 price.
25:52 Speaker 01 But they wouldn't. So those types of poison pills are just, again, they're PR. They would never actually impact because it would never get that far. Everything that happens with relocation, there's no surprise when the owners sit down and vote on relocation or vote on expansion. It's all been done prior to a vote that then becomes public. All the negotiating, all the discussion on price, on fees, on how it's going to work, it all happens before a vote.
26:20 Pablo Torre? But the whole premise here, though, is that there needed to be some way to give a check to Memphis on the idea that this guy's going to move us immediately to Vegas, or Larry Ellison, it was rumored, would move it to San Jose or wherever. And so Para agreed to this poison pill clause, I am told, that gave, yeah, the local limited partners the ability to say, actually, we can, we can stop this from happening. Here we come to the basketball part of the program. Because one of my favorite things in this is that Robert Para... Against the wishes of everybody else in the Grizzlies. He becomes the new owner and he says, "I want to play Tony Allen, the Grindfather, the most feared perimeter defender in the modern NBA, one-on-one."
27:06 Pablo Torre? And in the episode, we report the story of that and we flesh it out with details. Again, please go check that out. But the premise, David, of new owner comes in and everybody's like, "What the [bleep] is happening?" Because he wants to do something to prove his own athletic capital, his own reputation again.
27:22 Speaker 01 Like that matters. The irony. Do you remember there's the Ted Turner rule in baseball? Another rule that no one talks about. He wanted to put on a Braves uniform and be in the dugout. Because you have to wear a uniform in baseball.
27:35 Pablo Torre? I don't remember.
27:36 Speaker 01 Ted Turner used to own the Braves.
27:37 Pablo Torre? Yes.
27:38 Speaker 01 And Ted Turner, the rule in baseball is owners and presidents may not be in the dugout during the game. Because in order to be in the dugout, you have to be in a uniform. And the rule was made that owners and presidents may not be in uniform. But every owner talks about shagging during BP, talks about taking ground balls.
27:58 Pablo Torre? Shagging fly balls.
27:59 Speaker 01 Shagging fly ball, well, shagging anything, but fly balls especially. There are GMs who have lockers in the clubhouse. That exists. Oh, that exists.
28:08 Pablo Torre? What do they put in it?
28:09 Speaker 01 It's a regular, the clubbies have to take care of it like it's a regular locker. There's clothes, there's a jock, there's toiletries, there's a uni. Oh, I promise you, that is a thing.
28:18 Pablo Torre? That's ridiculous.
28:19 Speaker 01 Oh, oh, oh. Mark Cuban had a locker.
28:22 Pablo Torre? Mark Cuban was also like shooting around on the court pre-game.
28:25 Speaker 01 But it's a thing. And so are there, are there presidents who once wanted to shag fly balls? Yes, there are. Are there presidents who have? I have not because I was spoken to by people within my organization who said, "David, don't do it. You're gonna break your nose."
28:44 Pablo Torre? David, you cannot play shortstop tonight.
28:45 Speaker 01 That's it. Let Jeter be the shortstop, you be the president. Like, and I wanted to play, not in a real game, but I wanted to go in BP and just see if I could. Because I've always told people, like what Lebatard talks about, you can't catch a fly ball in BP. And I wanted to go try. And, uh... I was told you can't.
29:05 Pablo Torre? You were overruled.
29:06 Speaker 01 It is the Ted Turner is a real thing.
29:08 Pablo Torre? I'm looking at it. I mean, so this is something that I, I feel like I should have known. But Ted Turner was the manager of the Braves during what appears to be a lengthy losing streak.
29:20 Pablo Torre? And Ted Turner, by the way, one of the great media magnates of all time. The Superstation, CNN, TBS, TNT, like that's Ted Turner. Like that's what he did. But the idea that he was
29:35 Pablo Torre? actually in the dugout.
29:37 Speaker 01 He was, but you had to be in the uniform. I'm almost positive he's in uniform in the dugout. But you'd have to remind me, but we're going back a lot of years.
29:46 Pablo Torre? I'm now seeing a photo of Ted Turner wearing an Atlanta Braves uniform and a hat, like clapping. And it looks like he has some chaw, you know, just like some, again, he, honestly, he blends in. Moustache and everything blends in. With the point being that apparently, yes, there is a rule that, yes, if you own.
30:07 Speaker 01 You thought I was making this up?
30:09 Pablo Torre? It's just funny that there has to be a regulation stemming from May 1977 when during, excuse me, during a 16 game losing streak, Ted Turner managed a game.
30:21 Speaker 01 Correct.
30:23 Pablo Torre? And yeah, anyone who owns stock in a team was forbidden to manage it, they told him. And to quote Ted Turner, "They must have put that rule in yesterday."
30:34 Speaker 01 It was not a rule as far as I know prior to that, but it's definitely a rule now.
30:39 Pablo Torre? The quote continues, he was 38 years old at the time. "If I'm smart enough to save $11 million to buy the team, I ought to be smart enough to manage it." Which says quite a bit, I think, about the perspective.
30:53 Speaker 01 Wait, do you disagree with him? I find it to be remarkable that owning something you are told by anyone.
31:01 Speaker 01 That's like you own a franchise in McDonald's, you're not allowed to flip burgers.
31:04 Pablo Torre? Well, I would.
31:05 Speaker 01 Of course you should be allowed to flip burgers.
31:07 Pablo Torre? I don't think I want my burgers flipped by a non-burger flipping.
31:12 Speaker 01 Do you have any idea what it takes to flip a burger?
31:15 Pablo Torre? I, I don't, and that's why I want the experts to do it for me.
31:18 Speaker 01 Mark Cuban, I thought about it with Cuban, because that was something that we, when we were voting and thinking about voting Cuban in as an owner.
31:25 Pablo Torre? In baseball.
31:26 Speaker 01 One of the things, other than all of the ways.
31:28 Pablo Torre? What was he trying to buy?
31:29 Speaker 01 He was looking at the Padres, but he looked at a whole bunch of teams. Um, he would have bought anything, the Texas Rangers, anything. But what makes me laugh about Mark is that our concern was not just that he would not play ball with Bud Selig and with the other owners, that he would be a pain in the neck that we'd have to deal with. The other thought that we had is, would he want to play? Like, would he argue about the rules about not being in the dugout? Because it's bad enough when owners sit next to the dugout and peer in and, and are meddling in the way that all owners do. But would Mark Cuban take it to that next level? And I don't want to say the playing one-on-one with your players, that level, because I have personally no issue with that, Pablo, at all.
32:10 Pablo Torre? Well, we should, we should talk about this because the whole thing of like, hey, I want to play Tony Allen, and they print out a fight poster and they want to simulcast it and they want the press there and they put chairs on the practice floor and all of it. No one has embodied the thing you're describing of owner wanting to wear a uniform as much as Robert Para. The other thing that I have been told, which I didn't even put into the episode, because I didn't have it nailed down, but I can report it now, is that they actually also, remember Dante Jones, former Duke guy, he was a guard, he was at this point in the timeline, out of the league. But he was an NBA player.
32:51 Pablo Torre? Dante Jones, I am told, was invited to Robert Para's home in San Jose under some pretext that to Dante Jones.
33:01 Pablo Torre? resembled, oh, they're working me out for a job with the Memphis Grizzlies, like as a player. And what seems to have happened is that the entire goal was actually for him to be Robert Parra's sparring partner to prepare for Tony Allen. And so Dante Jones, who went out to San Jose, wound up just playing with Robert Parra, who was preparing, and even hired a trainer, David Thorpe, which I mentioned in the episode, to prepare for Tony Allen. Dante Jones was also conscripted into this, and then Dante Jones left and was like, yeah, that seems like it wasn't a workout for a job playing in the NBA.
33:35 Speaker 01 I assume he got paid, and I think it would have been outstanding. And I'm thinking about owner, player, and player-owner. Because there's a lot of talk in the NBA where Steph Curry has come out and said, why can't we have equity in teams? Why can't we get paid in stock? The way if you work on Wall Street or you work for many companies, you get equity in that company. There's real money in equity, and he's smart to say that because there is real money in equity versus salary. And the only example I can think of where there was a player who ended up getting the team, there was an issue with Pittsburgh, and you'd have to remind me, but I believe the Penguins were in bankruptcy and they owed Mario Lemieux was like a creditor of the Penguins. He was owed deferred money and the team went bankrupt. And instead of giving him money, I believe they gave him pieces of the team.
34:20 Pablo Torre? Hmm, this is 1999. Yeah, so in 98 Penguins filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, culminating in 99 when, yeah, Lemieux, the largest creditor.
34:31 Speaker 01 So there you have it. It's what we talk about with deferred money, and everyone says, what happens if the Dodgers go bankrupt and they owe Otani, you know, $680 million? Well, don't worry, they're not going to go bankrupt because since those days, and you had the Penguins, you had the Texas Rangers with Tom Hicks, and you had the Orioles with Eli Jacobs in the early 90s go bankrupt. None of the four major sports will allow a team to go bankrupt again, ever, because of the control you lose. The Dodgers sale to Mark Walter was a bankruptcy issue when they brought the Dodgers into bankruptcy because of the divorce. And so the reason you don't allow for a team to get sold in bankruptcy anymore is you Lose in theory, control.
35:13 Speaker 01 And believe me, the four leagues control the sales process in ways that would shock you, that you've come to find out a little bit when we've been on, talking about these topics. But when the Grizzlies owner gets brought in, and if the most he's gonna do is wanna play one on one with one of his players, that wouldn't even, you know, you say that that's of interest to the league and the league office. It's really not. If an owner wants to do that, and an owner thinks he's a baller.
35:40 Pablo Torre? But what if...
35:40 Speaker 01 Have at it.
35:41 Pablo Torre? I suppose the last thought I have on this is what if the game had actually happened? And Tony Allen obliterates, and I mean this physically.
35:48 Speaker 01 You mean like 12-0, 11-0, 21-0?
35:51 Pablo Torre? Or, I mean, what I was...
35:52 Speaker 01 Elbow to the face?
35:53 Pablo Torre? Exactly. What if there's an elbow to the face?
35:54 Speaker 01 So, a little blood? It'd be great, it'd be great PR.
35:58 Pablo Torre? I am very sad that this never happened. I understand, of course, why it was a horrible idea at the same time.
36:07 Speaker 01 So I can imagine a scenario where you have an employee and you showed video in your episode, I loved it, of Putin playing hockey.
36:14 Pablo Torre? Yes.
36:15 Speaker 01 And of the goalie, in theory, taking a knee in order to let the one mile an hour slapshot, you know, hit the back of the net. Putin is different than an owner of a team. As much as we wanna say that everyone's scared of owners, you would have no problem getting a player to go deep off an owner pitching to him in a charity game. You'd have no problem with the player beating an owner one on one. Different with Putin, though.
36:40 Pablo Torre? Different with Putin, and yet, for reasons that we also explicate in the episode, there are some linkages between Robert Parra and Vladimir Putin that are in fact worth making.
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37:15 Speaker 05 No FiOS, but it looks like it's got cable. Let's check out the kitchen.
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38:37 Pablo Torre? I want to pivot because when it comes to what an owner can do with the thing they bought, it brings us to The Washington Post.
38:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:43 Pablo Torre? And it's CBS. And where do you want to start, David?
38:47 Speaker 01 Are you upset? So I had a conversation with myself, nothing personal, about this issue, which is the show that I do on The Washington Post, and everyone is aghast. And you, PTFO is part of The Athletic.
39:02 Pablo Torre? We are a licensing partner.
39:03 Speaker 01 And right now, The Athletic is the sports department of The New York Times. Can we agree on that?
39:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that is accurate.
39:09 Speaker 01 And that The New York Times got rid of their sports section until they purchased The Athletic.
39:14 Pablo Torre? For like half a billion dollars.
39:16 Speaker 01 So whatever the price is, The New York Times sports section is The Athletic. They've outsourced it entirely.
39:24 Pablo Torre? Well, now they've... In-sourced it. They have brought it underneath the, literally in the building.
39:29 Speaker 01 They bought it. They literally bought The Athletic.
39:31 Pablo Torre? And they've now set about incorporating it into the larger New York Times infrastructure.
39:36 Speaker 01 So.
39:37 Pablo Torre? So they replaced, yes, without belaboring it too much, they spent $550 million to purchase The Athletic, replace the in-house sports department, they relocated their various sports writers here and there in ways that I'm not fully caught up on. But yes, that was a decision that changed.
39:53 Speaker 01 It's just that people were aghast about the Washington Post and saying, and Jeff Passan did a tweet saying this is, he's a goon, or a corporate goon, or there was some tweet that he had about Jeff Bezos, that, that, how can anyone do this? You're so rich that you own something, how could you run it like a business? And people were saying the Washington Post's sports is simply the greatest sports page ever. Well, if it were true, and if it got support by subscribers or online support, there would have been a business reason not to cut the sports section. Obviously, it's not carrying its weight, and to me, I found it to be a non-story.
40:32 Pablo Torre? Well, okay, so we're gonna disagree on this on a couple of levels, and I want to read Jeff Passan's quote here, because, quote, "The Washington Post has the best sports section in the country, and I don't think it's particularly close. Only a soulless corporate goon would think the paper is better without it. A short-sighted, cowardly decision. Shame is your legacy," end quote.
40:48 Speaker 01 Talking about Bezos.
40:50 Pablo Torre? Uh, that is the implication here. Um, I would say, and by the way, I have various,
40:57 Pablo Torre? interesting, I think, incentives at play here, right? So I, this thing we're talking on is an independent sports journalism show that has filled a vacuum, abdicated in large part by the decline of traditional media. And especially traditional media that once relied upon journalism as its business, because the business of journalism is so hard. And so, on the one hand, when I see the Washington Post is shuttering effectively, or decimating effectively its sports section, and I'm like, that is good for the business of a PTFO that does journalism and is now distinguished further by its journalism. That is like the selfish read on this. The other thought I have, though, is that the decline in what has been sports journalism
41:42 Pablo Torre? is a massive problem because when you lose independence, when you lose the ability to say, "We're not compromised by the financial incentives that attend other arrangements," as in, "I work for the team," or "I am explicitly trying to curry favor with our league partners." All of that stuff leads to less truth being told about in sports, a part of our society which has never been more important, or influential, or relevant, or valuable.
42:16 Speaker 01 It's a very lazy take to me, Pablo, because the people, if you're talking about the people who made up the department, is it possible that the people can find another avenue for their talent, another way to continue to be journalists?
42:31 Pablo Torre? I want to, I want to, I want to actually, I want to circumcise this conversation, so to speak, right? I want to make, I want to, I want to, what I want to do is separate and trim. Why am I going this way?
42:43 Speaker 01 That's a lot of penis talk.
42:45 Pablo Torre? I mean, apologies.
42:46 Speaker 01 I mean, heated rivalries, I don't know where your head is.
42:48 Pablo Torre? I have the, I have the dildo satellite in my head. What I want to do is pivot away, what I want to do is pivot away from the individuals who are being affected, as much as that is the human face on this, and that is what Jeff is speaking to, that there are these journalists over there who deserve better as a matter of merit. I don't even want to-
43:05 Speaker 01 But it's what you're speaking about. You're saying that journalism's going away because the Washington Post's sports section is going away.
43:11 Pablo Torre? I, it's, it's not going away entirely, but this was an enormous, enormous institution that is both historical in ways that are beyond dispute. This is Tony Kornheiser, this is Michael Wilbon, this is David Remnick, who worked for the Washington Post, this is, go on, David Ignatius, go on, just like the people who have come through that newsroom. As someone who recently watched All the President's Men and was inspired by it, it's just beyond, it's beyond dispute how important the Washington Post is in ways that I cannot even begin to summarize here.
43:47 Pablo Torre? When you lose a sports section, though, in the macro sense, what you're losing is another place where people can get accountability, where people can get reporting that is ostensibly uncompromised by the incentives that are otherwise crawling over sports media. And that's the shame of it.
44:08 Speaker 01 What's the barrier to entry to be a competitor of yours? I must be confused because I view the barrier to entry as nonexistent.
44:17 Pablo Torre? Anybody certainly can start a YouTube channel or start a podcast and talk into a microphone. What I mourn is the loss of another newsroom that had infrastructure and collective experience and collective expertise that no longer is being funded. And look, John Skipper not being here is also perfect as a metaphor for this conversation because at ESPN, where I worked under John, John funded journalism and had the luxury of doing so because...
44:52 Speaker 01 Do you view that happening still at ESPN?
44:55 Pablo Torre? Well, this is what I'm getting at. John's not here anymore. The idea of I want to fund a robust news gathering operation focused on sports journalism, even if it is not the thing that's making us money, because I have the league rights deals that are our business via cable television and subscription fees. That whole model is gone. So how can you support it, right? In The Washington Post, there was this premise initially, which is of course deeply naive, that a good billionaire, Jeff Bezos-
45:32 Speaker 01 Save the day.
45:33 Pablo Torre? -will swoop in with his principles intact and fund something even if it loses him money. And that is what Passon is speaking to. That is what everybody's realizing, oh, those don't exist.
45:42 Speaker 01 But they never did exist. It is a very silly, sort of naive thought that people have. And obviously, what Jeff is saying, whatever, it doesn't actually matter. But I'm talking about whether or not journalism is ending. And what people are saying is- If there were more subscribers to The Washington Post, home delivery subscribers, the paper would continue, as is, home delivery's basically gone away. Printing presses are basically disappearing. The buildings in which printing presses existed are being repurposed for something else. So are you willing, instead of home delivery, will you buy the digital subscription? Some people like the paywall, some people don't, some people do, but not enough to have the old business. The numbers have gone down because people get their news elsewhere.
46:27 Speaker 01 Why are we mourning that? You have built your career on adjusting to what the new reality is.
46:33 Pablo Torre? And I think there's fair critique in saying that The Washington Post did not figure out what others have figured out. By the way, The New York Times, what they figured out? Hey, let's start a robust games division of our company. Let's get Wordle.
46:45 Speaker 01 Unheard of.
46:47 Pablo Torre? Brilliant. We're going to find what is our equivalent to live sports rights? What is a business separate and apart from journalism, such that we can support the journalism with the other stuff, with the toy department, so to speak, right? And literally, in this case, it's games. In this story, though, what I'm also detecting is a macro-level problem is the way in which journalism is giving way to opinion. The work of reporting and how to fund it, the newsroom as a concept, a collective expertise. It's not just Washington Post, right? It is now CBS. And so the question of, ah, CBS, okay. So that's the Ellison's, that is the aforementioned Larry Ellison,
47:32 Pablo Torre? one of the richest men in the world. Washington Post is Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world. Both of those men, incidentally, simultaneously, figuring out, how do we do business in the Trump era with the government, with Donald Trump, who is more transactional, needless to say, than any president we've ever seen? They are clearly trimming the journalism. And they're figuring out their new business model. So CBS, to you, David, as a sometime...
48:02 Speaker 01 I'm an analyst at CBS, I have to point that out.
48:04 Pablo Torre? Exactly, sometime analyst.
48:07 Speaker 01 That's a funny word for it.
48:08 Pablo Torre? What is, what is, what is your view of what's happening at CBS, then?
48:14 Speaker 01 So when they had the all hands meeting, here's what is the question. Do you have the ability to be independent as a journalist? When there are so many intertwined governmental issues that frankly have always existed. They're just more out front now. So I'm laughing when you say that Trump is the only transactional president. That there is a long list of politicians who have gotten wealthy, both in office and then after having been in office.
48:40 Pablo Torre? Sure, but as a function of degree.
48:42 Speaker 01 It's out of hand and all of the other things about Trump that we can talk about that upset me. The transactional nature, it's almost, it's almost on the bottom of my list because it happens so frequently.
48:53 Pablo Torre? I will say quickly that I think it's impossible to extricate the transactionality from the policies that lead to horrors everywhere, but I want to get back to CBS.
49:03 Speaker 01 So what CBS is asking themselves and what all divisions are, is the juice worth the squeeze? My favorite expression to ask because it actually happens in boardrooms. What is it that we are, what's at risk? What's happening with the value of our company, with the, with our value of shares? If we are doing this journalistic approach to this story that ends up having, making an enemy in the Justice Department, an enemy in the White House, what impact will that have on all of our other business that we have to do? And that is what the job is of a CEO. And people don't like CEOs, but their job is not to do anything other than decide jump balls. They decide between departments, who should win the day?
49:45 Speaker 01 They decide between big macro issues, where it is their company should be and should be going. That's their true job. And so I don't ever want to talk down about what they're doing at CBS because they're doing it for an actual reason of value. And the irony, and I close with this, CBS has, just like Metalark, an equity plan. Employees down at the lower levels, they're so focused on the value of their retirement fund, on the value of the share price, that in one ear, one side of the mouth, they're arguing against what their CEO does. I hate my CEO, he makes so much money and I hate the decisions he's making. Where's our stock at?
50:30 Speaker 01 Oh my God, our stock went down 10 points and my, my, wait a minute, my IRA is down 600 bucks. And it's always bothered me, and I've always stood in lunchrooms, and I mean that metaphorically, saying, "I don't understand how you cannot support your CEO because you're rooting for him to succeed because you actually are acting in your own self-interest." And it really does end arguments.
50:53 Pablo Torre? Well, hold on. In this case, it starts one with [bleep] five minutes left. The thing about the CEO, though, in the context of journalism, right, is that I fully admit how insanely difficult it is to create a profitable business model for journalism in an era in which the competition is endless, in an era in which people are habitually adjusting to, frankly, accept news and information from places that CBS and Washington Post never had to worry about before, right? So all of that is true, and there is no magic solution where it's like, "If only they would
51:35 Pablo Torre? do the journalist's business plan," right? It's not like there is a sliding door opportunity, and it's like, "Oh, they're just choosing to walk through this one." That said, the question of like, what can we mourn here as a matter of how [bleep] it is, is that there are these administrations now, with the CEOs included, for whom they are... they're not standing up for the thing that their institution that they're trying to save now was most distinguished by, which is to say, the quality and the necessity of the journalism, right? They are figuring out, "Okay, what do we do instead?
52:20 Pablo Torre? How do we not lose credibility while also saving money?" And the things that are being sacrificed are not merely the individuals who I certainly feel horribly for, the individual journalists who got to figure out what to do outside of these institutions.
52:36 Speaker 01 Do you feel badly for all the people who get laid off, like at Amazon?
52:39 Pablo Torre? Oh, yes.
52:40 Speaker 01 Because there were a whole new list of... Okay, just want to make sure.
52:43 Pablo Torre? Yes, and if I was somebody who did that job in some regard, I would have even more direct...
52:48 Speaker 01 Empathy.
52:49 Pablo Torre? And by the way, airtime for them. But I'm the guy who does journalism, and I got to acknowledge that this is, I think, good for the business of PTFO, but horrific for our country.
53:00 Pablo Torre? It's bad. It's bad. When you lose these players and when you have people who are running the companies making compromises to favor administrations that are looking for more favorable coverage, which brings in Barry Weiss as a character, which brings in the Allison's, who are active, I mean, again, their job is to transact, but there are no checks on those transactions anymore.
53:22 Speaker 01 Think about what Allison's gonna do as no owner of TikTok.
53:26 Pablo Torre? Oh, my God.
53:26 Speaker 01 He's gonna make sure that everyone's algorithm, he's gonna do what he must did, smartly so, make sure that the algorithms are such that it benefits your business.
53:35 Pablo Torre? Yeah, and look, so the reason they do the transacting is because with this administration, especially as a function of degree, it works. You know, you get something, there is a, there is a quid, and there is a quo, and they are finding ways to exchange. So-
53:52 Speaker 01 And it benefits more people than just the people in the C-suite, and I think that that is something that gets lost, and I hate to be the face of the argument of, of the CEO and the C-suite, but the trickle-down, and people will yell at me incorrectly about trickle-down economics, let's just talk about the reality of what it is to be a 401k holder of a large public company.
54:11 Pablo Torre? So, sure, is there the question of how do we get the value of this company to be as big as it could be so that we could support all of these employees and all of their retirement plans and all of that stuff? Sure. The question of what you are as, as what remains, like, what, what is still left here? I fear that it's very, very safe to say that you are, um, yeah, you're not really journalism anymore.
54:41 Speaker 01 You sound so pompous.
54:42 Pablo Torre? That's, uh, that's, that's, that's the fear, is that you gotta be about this, and they're not about it, and that's, that's, that's- That's sad.
54:52 Speaker 01 It's not sad, Pablo. What's sad is that your view, that what you're doing is somehow so integral to the ongoing life that we live. I love your show, I love being on it, but don't overestimate.
55:06 Pablo Torre? We...
55:08 Speaker 01 You're making a difference when you inform people.
55:11 Pablo Torre? I think that there is only so much accountability that is even imaginable left in American life. And The Washington Post and CBS and its news programs used to be some of the foremost practitioners of it. And we're losing that. And in the meantime, what we got, again, to bring it full circle, is a bunch of executives dressing up in baseball uniforms saying, "I know how to win this game."
55:43 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.
55:49 Pablo Torre? And I'll talk to you next time.
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