Blake Griffin Doesn't Stop for Anyone (feat. Joe Mande)

He is a Clippers legend — and an off-the-court pioneer. On the eve of his new late-night show, the Prime Video analyst sits down with Pablo (plus a few surprises) about why he didn't shake Steve Ballmer's hand, how much influence journalists should have on NBA democracy, where to get your Osama bin Laden rookie card autographed and, of course, Kelly Clarkson. • AUCTION: Bid on Autographed Hats for Charity https://ptfo.betterworld.org/auctions/kyra-fund-exclusive-auctions-he • Watch "The Stepback with Blake Griffin" https://www.youtube.com/@stepbackwithblakegriffin (Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Apple Card.) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, brought to you by Apple Card. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  The power forward has excellent vision forward, but not so much in the periphery.

• 0:14Pablo Torre?

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• 0:59Pablo Torre?

  While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Shop the winners now at dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:17Pablo Torre?

  I just heard something that completely shocked me, which is that 45% of girls and 32% of boys feel overwhelming stress from just being on social media. And together, 25% of both feel worse about their own lives. Researchers found teens who spend more than five hours a day on their phones are at double the risk for suicidal thoughts. Bottom line, teens and phones, no mix. And with a daughter myself, I am constantly worried about when she reaches an age where we'll have to have the phone talk. But here's the good news. There is a solution, a company called Gab, which has solved the problem by doing something that no one else is doing. Their approach is tech in steps. Tech in steps works by providing safer phones and watches for kids with no social media,

• 2:02Pablo Torre?

  tailored to every age, offering the right device at the right time. From GPS tracking-enabled watches for younger kids to phones with parent-enabled apps for tweens and teens, each device allows kids to more safely grow their independence. You don't have to give your kid a device that was made for an adult. Get them Gab, which keeps them socially connected without social media. And right now, you can use our code to get 60% off a kid's phone that will make parenting easier and give you more peace of mind. That's why I am recommending Gab. Visit gab.com/ptfo and use code PTFO for an exclusive offer. That's Gab, G-A-B-B. This episode is brought to you by Parloa. Think about the last time you called customer service and got put on hold again

• 2:47Pablo Torre?

  just to repeat yourself to three different people. That's the experience Parloa is built to eliminate. Parloa has always been a voice-first AI that's secure, scalable, and built to serve the customer. Their AI voice agents make customer conversations feel natural, personal, and genuinely helpful. Because when AI actually works, the customer shouldn't even be thinking about the AI. It should just feel like getting help. And Parloa doesn't stop at the conversation itself. With Lens, they help spot problems in each interaction as they happen. And with Navigator, you understand why those issues are occurring in the first place and what to do next.

• 3:33Pablo Torre?

  Together, it's one of the most seamless, most productive voice AI experiences out there for the enterprise and for the customer on the other end of the line. Learn more at parloa.com. That's P-A-R-L-O-A dot com. Unhold your customers with Pablo.

• 4:03Pablo Torre?

  At some point, I think you started following our show on Instagram.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:06Pablo Torre?

  And we were excited because I never know who from the Clippers alumni network [BLEEP] hates us and who kind of appreciates what we're at least attempting, doing our best to do.

• 4:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:19Pablo Torre?

  And you turned out to be somebody who is thoughtful in ways that I find not just endearing, but now, as in this show you're making, a guy I actually want to hear from.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know what's funny is I, I, one of the posts about the Clippers, you know, I liked the post. And so it's more about, you spent your time on this, you did this. And then some, of course, people saw the like, and they're like, F Blake Griffin, like Clippers fans. I get no joy in like seeing this happen to the Clippers. I, for one thing, the people I feel the most bad for are Clipper fans.

• 4:52Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 4:53Speaker 01

  Because they didn't do, they've just, they've been nothing but loyal, and I still live in LA. I got run into Clippers fans all the time, they're the best. Like, some of the most loyal fans in all of sports. Find me a franchise.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  Dude.

• 5:04Speaker 01

  Where there's been that many downs, and I've been a part of those downs, I'm not putting down the franchise. I unfortunately have caused some downs.

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  I am a down.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm a downer. But like, I had Donald Sterling as an owner, and he was one of the worst and notoriously cheap. And now you have a guy who's like, I'll pay more. But like, I take zero delight in seeing the Clippers not be where they should be.

• 5:29Pablo Torre?

  The number one thing I've always wanted to make clear to your point is that I'm not trying to use Clipper fans suffering for like, whatever resembles my own personal success. It is one of the worst mathematical formulas, actually, would be to look around the league and say, aha, Clippers fans.

• 5:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:50Pablo Torre?

  Those will be where the clicks are.

• 5:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 5:52Pablo Torre?

  You know?

• 5:53Speaker 01

  Hundred percent.

• 5:54Pablo Torre?

  And so there is punching down that I'm sort of like self-conscious about. I never want it to be about these people who are spending hard-earned money at a time when everything's more expensive.

• 6:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:02Pablo Torre?

  And use them as the punchline. It's never about the fan being the punchline.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  Even as a retired athlete, like, looking back, like, the only reason we make as much money as we make, or the guys that are making money now, it is fan-driven, and they're engaging, actively engaging, not only in watching and going to games, but even just the discourse online and how much traffic, how many eyeballs touch every sports topic. So, um, I don't know, I think it's fascinating. Because I think there's so, there's enough shows that are reactionary of like, hey, what happened last night? And that's why I wanted to do something like in this avenue.

• 6:39Pablo Torre?

  I do appreciate the shout-out you gave me.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why I wanted to reach out and be like, hey, you never know how people are gonna take something, but I'm like, I want you to know, this, this actually is out of respect. This isn't out of like, you know?

• 6:50Pablo Torre?

  You did not ask me for my permission when it came to Stav Rosalkius talking about how that Filipino is...

• 6:58Speaker 02

  You know what? I guess I'll just have to take these scoops to Pablo Torre.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure he scoops his own scoops, man.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Come on, man, that Filipino wouldn't even know who Uncle Dennis was without me.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  That was his pitch, by the way. He loved, he was like, and I was like, this is, you gotta leave.

• 7:11Pablo Torre?

  I was, I was texting Stav, uh, today. I'm just glad your cameo with Blake arrives in time for Filipino-American History Month, which October is. And his response is, wow, they'll give anyone a month these days.

• 7:45Pablo Torre?

  One of the things that I did, by the way, in preparing to talk to you today, is consult some of our mutual friends that I don't even know that you know that we have. But one of them is Neil Brennan.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 7:56Pablo Torre?

  And Neil, for those who don't know, not only a fellow podcaster, but one of the great comedy writers ever, co-wrote Chappelle's Show. Look him up on IMDb, Neil will love it if you do that.

• 8:10Pablo Torre?

  But he said, quote, "You guys have something in common. You were both underestimated by Steve Ballmer."

• 8:22Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, by the way, that is just like the perfect snapshot of like, you just text somebody like, oh, I'm going to... And like, you get that joke back, and you're like, God, that was, why didn't I think of that? God, it's so good. So good.

• 8:34Pablo Torre?

  And truly, for people who don't know what that is about, how could you have been underestimated by the owner of the team? What happened?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  I don't know. I mean, underestimate, I don't know. I mean, I feel like if you'd asked Clipper fans, they'd probably be like, they made the right decision. You know what I mean? I think just the way, the way things ended there, I wish I could change a couple of things about it. That's what Chris Paul and Deandre and I, and I think like JJ and Jamal, and these guys that were there for like the Lob City era, like, sure, we did not win a championship. We didn't accomplish that ultimate goal. But I do think we look back on it with like a sense of pride.

• 9:12Pablo Torre?

  I am mindful of the ways in which I am tempting you to answer questions like you're at a press conference.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got you.

• 9:20Pablo Torre?

  And I'm sorry.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  It's all good. It's all good.

• 9:22Pablo Torre?

  But one of the funniest clips of all time is

• 9:27Pablo Torre?

  right after the trade happens. I just gotta explain to people. You were called a Clipper for life.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. My jersey retirement ceremony during my free agency meeting.

• 9:37Pablo Torre?

  You had the shirt?

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:40Pablo Torre?

  The shirt?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  Pioneer, pioneer.

• 9:42Pablo Torre?

  Pioneer, I mean, do you have that shirt still?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Jared Stacey, who's, uh, runs the Amazon's Prime, Amazon Sports, uh, in our first seminar last year before we started the NBA on Prime, he does this whole speech about, you know, we are pioneers. And I really have to single out one guy. And he says, because Blake, this isn't his first foray into being a pioneer. And I'm like, oh, no. He brings up the shirt, found the shirts and bought everybody on the Prime, on the Prime team, a pioneer shirt. So I do have a shirt now. I don't think I kept it at the time. And when, when it happened during the free agency.

• 10:23Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 01

  I like saw it, I clocked it on the, because all the staff members had it on, I clocked it, but I didn't like put much thought into it all. I was like saying hi to people. And literally on the way home, it had exploded on Twitter, and I was like, is that Martin Luther? Is that Gandhi? Oh, my God. It's like, you know, just the amount of people that were on there.

• 10:43Pablo Torre?

  So just, it's, this is 2017, you're being recruited. Do you remember the other faces?

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Gandhi, am I right?

• 10:50Pablo Torre?

  Gandhi is, is right over the second E in pioneers.

• 10:53Speaker 01

  MLK.

• 10:54Pablo Torre?

  Correct.

• 10:55Speaker 01

  Was Obama on there?

• 10:56Pablo Torre?

  Obama is on there.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Obama's on there. Muhammad Ali?

• 11:00Pablo Torre?

  Correct, top left.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, let me, I, that, that may be all I got.

• 11:07Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 11:10Pablo Torre?

  Over the O, Abraham Lincoln.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Of course. I mean, that one actually makes a lot of sense. Me and Abe, me and Honest Abe.

• 11:17Pablo Torre?

  Above Abraham Lincoln, JFK.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, checks out too.

• 11:22Pablo Torre?

  At the center, Nelson Mandela.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Oh, that's the, I knew, I knew that.

• 11:27Pablo Torre?

  That's embarrassing for you to not know. And then.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I've tried to block the shirt out of my memory.

• 11:32Pablo Torre?

  Then to the right of Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Well, and again, that one makes a whole lot of sense.

• 11:41Speaker 01

  None of them make any sense.

• 11:42Pablo Torre?

  I'm sorry. I forgot that this is hiding almost artistically like an Easter egg in a Highlights magazine. Uh, underneath Einstein's chin is, is Michael Jackson.

• 11:57Speaker 01

  No, it's not. Is Michael Jackson on there?

• 12:00Pablo Torre?

  I didn't notice that until now. It's sort of like part, I feel like the designer of this shirt, who I would like to formally invite on the show now. I would like to ask you, if you started with the Michael Jackson and the S, I think you sort of worked backwards from there.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  I honestly feel like if you like tried to put that, like describe that to like ChatGPT to make a T-shirt, it would be like, we can't legally do this because it's so factually incorrect.

• 12:26Pablo Torre?

  We've been reasonably programmed to no longer do this.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry. That's actually where we draw the line. Like, we found it.

• 12:33Pablo Torre?

  We've met with religious leaders and they've said, we can't put Blake Griffin and Nelson Mandela and Gandhi with Michael Jackson in the same quarter.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  We did it.

• 12:48Pablo Torre?

  All of which is to say that after that all out recruiting pitch from the only team he had ever played for, the team that drafted him number one overall in 2009, Blake Griffin signed a five-year, near-max contract in 2017 with Steve Ballmer, making the then five-time All-NBA forward what both sides said they wanted Blake to be, a Clipper for life. But just six months later, NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski tweeted this.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  My least favorite Woj bomb of all time, I gotta say.

• 13:25Pablo Torre?

  January 29th, 2018, the Clippers and Pistons have agreed on a deal to trade Blake Griffin for Tobias Harris, Avery Bradley, Boban Marjanovic, a first round and a second round draft pick, league sources tell ESPN, period. 22,000 likes, 25,000 retweets, 22 bookmarks.

• 13:41Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. People saving that for a rainy day, just to be able to pull that one up. Yeah, that was, well, 6:32 Eastern, middle of the afternoon for me. Yeah. And then you're on a plane and I was on a plane to Detroit the next morning, 7:00 AM.

• 13:55Pablo Torre?

  Eventually bringing us to Blake's long-awaited return to Los Angeles, when the Pistons visited the Clippers the next season.

• 14:03Speaker 04

  This will give you all you need to know about the situation still being icy. That's the owner of the Clippers, Steve Ballmer, looking to shake hands and exchange pleasantries with Blake Griffin. Blake wanted no parts of it.

• 14:17Pablo Torre?

  And what happens in the actual game, just for the record, is that Blake Griffin drops 44 points with eight rebounds, five assists, and three steals in a big Pistons win. But given that we are the show that continues to investigate Steve Ballmer, one of the 10 richest men in the world, and Lawrence Frank, who's head of basketball, and Gillian Zucker, who's head of business with the Clippers, all of whom the NBA has suspended, incidentally, on account of this whole salary cap circumvention scheme, which has also sparked an ongoing federal inquiry, Blake Griffin's in-game performance here is not the part I wanted to tell a story for you. I want to be very clear about this. My goal is to mostly understand how good Blake Griffin's peripheral vision is.

• 15:04Pablo Torre?

  In the Planet Earth video that David Attenborough is narrating, you.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  The power forward has excellent vision forward, but not so much in the periphery. That's, yeah, that's.

• 15:18Pablo Torre?

  Did you just, is that your first David Attenborough?

• 15:20Speaker 01

  No, no, dude, I, I love David Attenborough. Are you kidding me? Love it. So I, I saw him, but I saw him as I'm like beginning to take off. And so my entire career, my routine.

• 15:35Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Was I would finish at the free throw line, uh, that pre-game warm-up early, well before the game. I finished at the free throw line. And when I was playing for the Clippers in Staples, the redcoats, the ushers that are all, they knew, they knew to watch when I was finishing because I would beeline sprint. I never stopped for anybody my entire career. Now, I would come back out, maybe if I needed to talk to somebody, but very rarely would I do that. And then when I went to Detroit, those, they got used to that routine. That was like part of my routine. So I finished with my free throws. I, I swear on everything. I don't see him at first. I shake my coach's hand, which I always did, and then I would kind of take some steps. I would kind of make sure it's clear that I'm not going to

• 16:20Speaker 01

  truck anybody like right in the, and I took off and I see him and I'm like, I split second, like, I'm not stopping. I've never stopped for anyone. Why would I stop now? And I didn't think that much of it. And I get to the locker room and I'm continuing my routine, right? And, um, I get a text from my agent and he's like, Gillian Zucker like texts like, hey, can Blake go up and shake Steve's hand before the tip? And I'm like, I'm like, so, okay, oh, oh, this is all for the appearance. And like, I totally get it. There was, there was a little bit of backlash, but, um, from how the trade went down.

• 16:59Pablo Torre?

  And you ask yourself, what would Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela do?

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know what? I stuck to my guns.

• 17:05Pablo Torre?

  That's right. I will non-violently protest like Mahatma Gandhi. I will moonwalk out of this like Michael Jackson.

• 17:12Speaker 01

  What would the king of pop do in this situation? Uh, so like the king of pop dropped a hot 44, you know? And, um, yeah, so I don't know. And my whole thing, I think I said it after the game, but it was like, he has my number. He has, there's any avenue to.

• 17:28Pablo Torre?

  The point that I'm making here is that it's weird for you to be obligated.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:34Pablo Torre?

  Hey, can you do the theater of being cool with this?

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 17:38Pablo Torre?

  And I'm like, well, what happened to the shirt?

• 17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. What happened to the, the Jersey retirement ceremony? Um, and then what really pissed me off too is like, you know, there's some, some Clippers reporters, some beat writers that like.

• 17:51Pablo Torre?

  I'm familiar with them now.

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're like, know them well, um, that were like, like very critical of what I did. And I, in my mind, I'm like, I'm like, I'm also, you guys know I do that every game. You know that. So why, like, like you said, why was I obligated? And I have zero hard feelings towards, towards that whole situation. But like, it was just a crazy, another crazy thing that I was like, how, how, how did I end up the bad guy in this situation of like, I don't know.

• 18:19Pablo Torre?

  It's the comedy of what apparently matters, right? So just the idea that it's really important that Steve gets to make peace with you after all that stuff. And it's also, by the way, one of the things that I'm managing personally, this brings us to a conversation, maybe of the media where it's like, it's really hard to be a beat writer right now. Like Clippers have like no one that travels with them, I believe, right now. It sucks. So I also understand that they're getting leaned on by team officials, like they got to, they have a job that they're trying to do.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  It's everywhere. It's not just the Clippers. It's everywhere.

• 18:52Pablo Torre?

  Everywhere, dude. And it's everywhere. So even like, part of why I bring it up is that how the sausage of a transaction gets made and the news cycle that follows.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:02Pablo Torre?

  The idea that you're finding out via Woj bomb.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:06Pablo Torre?

  The job of insider is funny.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  It is inherently, a lot of upside, not a ton of credibility.

• 19:13Pablo Torre?

  I mean, these are jobs, I mean, Woj was making millions and millions of dollars.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And for the record, I think Woj did, I think Woj did a, a really good job because he was like sort of the bridge between reporter and insider. I think in my, as far as I know, but I also haven't studied that.

• 19:30Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, but there's, there's a multi-part series about Woj at some point, perhaps, but you know, was, was not an insider, became an insider, had the background of doing, you know, straight ahead journalism, but the idea of being a nexus of news, of transactions, in which I'm going to learn from your Twitter account that something happened seconds before it's going to be announced anyway.

• 19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:55Pablo Torre?

  And in exchange, you get to be, yeah, the pipeline of how the NBA sausage gets made.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. You get the next scoop and the next scoop and the next scoop. The craziest thing to me was the draft. When he started tweeting out the picks before they'd come out, I was like, how were we allowed? Like, how the.

• 20:11Pablo Torre?

  What's the point of this?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  Can't we just let the draft happen? Like, what's the, what's the point? Yeah.

• 20:15Pablo Torre?

  I'm a big fan of like the public interest and journalism and all that stuff, but the idea of you're watching a TV show and I'm going to tell you what the actor says like five seconds before he says it is like, who is his servant?

• 20:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like watching Game of Thrones and like dragon dies. Like, God, [BLEEP]. God, damn it. Just ruin the episode, man. Why did I look at my phone? It's like, let's just watch it together.

• 20:40Pablo Torre?

  But by the way, one of the things that he ended up doing, I just remember this part too. There was a draft when he was told like, hey, you can't do this because ESPN. And they were like, hey, we got the broadcast rights. So can you not do this? You're like [BLEEP] up our business. And his compromise solution was, I'm going to use synonyms instead of drafted. The San Antonio Spurs are circling.

• 21:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:06Pablo Torre?

  The New York Knicks are heavily considered.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. The New York Knicks are obsessed with so-and-so.

• 21:15Pablo Torre?

  The Sixers are enamored with Landry Shamet.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  That's so funny to me.

• 21:20Pablo Torre?

  Boston is tantalized by Robert Williams with the 27th pick.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Is that a real, is that a real?

• 21:26Pablo Torre?

  These are all real.

• 21:27Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

  These are all real. Hold on.

• 21:30Speaker 01

  That's incredible.

• 21:31Pablo Torre?

  Source, Utah Jazz have no plans to pass on Grayson Allen.

• 21:35Speaker 01

  The double.

• 21:36Pablo Torre?

  The double negative.

• 21:38Speaker 01

  They have zero plans to not not like Grayson Allen.

• 21:42Pablo Torre?

  The Lakers are bricked up for Mo Wagner.

• 21:47Pablo Torre?

  That was, that was.

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know that one was made up.

• 21:49Pablo Torre?

  Unfortunately, that was, that was not real.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  That would be incredible.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  Just trying to figure out like today's lingo.

• 21:55Pablo Torre?

  I'm honestly too old to know.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  The Orlando Magic are glazing, six nine center.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  My guy, I think we, I think we.

• 22:05Pablo Torre?

  I think, I think your, your, your, your, your point has been made.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:10Pablo Torre?

  And now Shams is.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  Shams is the number one guy now. Um, he, he undercut our Amazon MVP announcement, which was like also funny because I feel like that stuff gets leaked. It's been getting leaked for a long time, but we had a fun little, fun little thing back and forth with him when he announced the Shea two time MVP.

• 22:32Speaker 05

  All right now, just to be clear, the official announcement is happening here. Dirk and Steve, you all both won MVPs, but I don't remember Shams spoiling it way back then.

• 22:41Speaker 03

  I don't think he was around then. He was a baby then.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  What are we doing, man? Like it's Sunday, Shams, go to brunch, you nerd. Come on.

• 22:50Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 22:50Speaker 01

  And we were supposed to have it like literally like two, three hours later, whatever it was.

• 22:54Pablo Torre?

  And the thing about the Shea thing, as I remember it now, what's always interesting about MVP votes and all NBA selections? I don't even know if you thought about this when you were a player, but like it is very funny that like a senate of media members.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:08Pablo Torre?

  Votes on stuff that can cause like eight figure swings in real money.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  1,000%.

• 23:15Pablo Torre?

  If someone's gonna get all NBA.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  The beauty of it, I guess, is that like there are people with votes who have a vast, vast NBA knowledge. But I also think with that, there are probably some that I, I don't think should have that much control over whether a player is, and forget about they can go on to make X amount more money. But just like the distinction of being an all NBA player, there's 15 guys a year. Like that is a big deal. It's very hard to make an all NBA team. And I think that coming down to it, being just whoever felt like, oh, it's this over this. And like, you can always make an argument for some, but some there's, there's not an argument to me.

• 23:58Pablo Torre?

  So the way it works, by the way, all NBA, it is 100 sports journalists and broadcasters who vote. And part of what I think is so funny is that I don't think those journalists are being corrupted enough.

• 24:14Pablo Torre?

  Like think about the money on the other side of, hey, if you can get my guy.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:19Pablo Torre?

  To be second team, all NBA. Like, why isn't someone?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  These journalists should be flying private everywhere.

• 24:26Pablo Torre?

  Brian Windhorst should be living in a mansion. Like, what are we doing?

• 24:32Speaker 01

  He's just going on the most lavish trips of all time.

• 24:34Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God. It's like, why is Brian Zoom background a photo of the Cayman Islands?

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Oh, he's there. That's.

• 24:42Pablo Torre?

  He is, he is. He's living where Sam Bankman-Fried used to live.

• 24:46Speaker 01

  But okay, so what, what's, what's the alternative? Like what, where do you go?

• 24:50Pablo Torre?

  I, I think it.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Can't be coaches.

• 24:52Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Same issue.

• 24:53Pablo Torre?

  Okay, so rank who is least qualified.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Okay, we're throwing out coaches, we're throwing out GMs, we're throwing out owners.

• 25:02Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  If players would take it seriously, that would be a really interesting look at like how players view the game.

• 25:11Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I don't know that I would trust the players to make those votes.

• 25:14Pablo Torre?

  Much like John F. Kennedy once did, we're contemplating the problems with democracy.

• 25:19Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 25:20Pablo Torre?

  Who do we trust with something really important? How do you make it so that a bunch of people come together?

• 25:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Pablo Torre?

  And you balance all of these interests? Cause you're right. Look, the counter from journalists is like, you guys, you players are just gonna vote for like guys you liked and didn't like.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:34Pablo Torre?

  And the players say to the journalists, you're doing the same [BLEEP] thing.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 25:38Pablo Torre?

  Blake was a [BLEEP] to you or he's really nice to you and you're gonna favor that, which is by the way, the hu, the human problem.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, mo, like most people I know with a vote, take it very seriously.

• 25:49Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  They take it very, Taylor Rooks has votes and she like, one, she knows the game. She studies the game. She watches everything, consumes everything. And she also keeps it close, like now after she's cast her vote, I think we talked about it last year, but she truly does the work and I think most do. But I don't know if everybody takes it seriously to the degree that she does.

• 26:12Pablo Torre?

  As I'm contemplating what the solution is in my head, I realize just now that I'm like literally reinventing Congress.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:18Pablo Torre?

  I'm like, okay, there should be one house where everyone represents geographically, according to population. The other one is just two per, two per state.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  A vote passes, Congress goes up to.

• 26:31Pablo Torre?

  Certainly no corruption will happen now. And then, and then there's a, there's a president.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  Adam Silver. Final vote. Yeah, I, I don't know. I don't pretend to have the answers and I don't think it's like this broken system.

• 26:46Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  But it is, it is an interesting thing to think about how, how much a vote, a vote or two votes can affect a guy's trajectory.

• 26:56Pablo Torre?

  By the way, I do wanna surprise you with something, if that's okay.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 27:01Pablo Torre?

  That's what I do here. And I just noticed that your voice just, just became a little more cautious.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Got a little more serious. Like, what, what is this guy, what did you find out?

• 27:10Pablo Torre?

  We do have someone who has been waiting patiently behind the glass. And they're gonna join us after the break.

• 27:27Pablo 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. I'm gonna be honest with you all, I am not much of a gym guy. So I've always been fairly hesitant about taking creatine. What I've learned is that it is not just for workouts.

• 28:09Pablo Torre?

  It actually helps throughout the entire day and not just when you're at the gym. It is easy to notice an uptick in a bunch of areas throughout your day. For instance, more strength, more power, you can recover quicker. It can even feel like you have higher cognitive performance. And when I looked into it, creatine actually does scientifically help in those ways. And so if you're gonna take creatine every day, why not make sure it's the best? While most brands compete on flavors and marketing, Momentus is focused on what you put in your body. And that's why they created Signature Spec Creatine. Their most advanced creatine ever, setting a new standard for quality. Momentus Creatine delivers 10 times fewer impurities, two to five times tighter heavy metal limits,

• 28:53Pablo Torre?

  and full PFAS and microplastic screening. Now, I am not a scientist, to be clear, but that sounds pretty good. So if you wanna try Momentus Signature Spec Creatine, head to livemomentous.com and use code PTFO for up to 35% off your entire first order. That's livemomentous.com promo code PTFO for up to 35% off. Livemomentous.com promo code PTFO.

• 29:24Speaker 06

  With the 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.

• 29:56Pablo Torre?

  I should say for people who don't know Joe's work on the show, Joe previously, are you familiar with his caps?

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, he, I sent him one as a member of the. What did you, which one did you get? Or what did you make for him? You were on the Brooklyn Nets.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Yes, and I got the bee.

• 30:10Pablo Torre?

  Beignets.

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the beignets, that's right.

• 30:12Pablo Torre?

  I was really proud of that one.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I started seeing those popular ones.

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  Didn't make it on your like, uh, your walk to the locker room.

• 30:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, sorry. I think I, I put it in a case.

• 30:23Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, that's where.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Break, break in case of emergency.

• 30:27Pablo Torre?

  The good news, it's a PSA 10 now. Okay, cool. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's perfectly graded. Yeah, mint.

• 30:34Pablo Torre?

  We got, uh, Joe to make us a T Wolves cap that we auctioned off for charity. And it was, uh, chemtrails. Yeah, it was the old, uh, M. It was the old. Yeah, MT load.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Makes sense. Makes perfect sense.

• 30:47Pablo Torre?

  Makes perfect sense.

• 30:52Pablo Torre?

  So I just need to jump in here to clarify that the reason I brought back stand up and writer and actor and friend of PTFO, Joe Mandy, is not because of the March Madness ad campaign for a certain telecom giant in which Joe and Blake Griffin both pretended to be podcasters. Yeah. The, what are we, the guarantee guys.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  The guarantee guys. Guarantee. Every office in America is finalizing their bracket pool.

• 31:18Pablo Torre?

  You wore my culture as a podcaster as a costume. That's right. Like, here are these two guys who are too good for podcasts. I know. I wanted to be Filipino while I did it, but they were upset about that.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  They were weirdly against it.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  We tried so hard.

• 31:33Pablo Torre?

  The reason Joe Mandy is here is because on account of Blake's new late night show, The Step Back, I think you have demands. I do, yeah. Well, it's just you have a show now and, um, I just feel like there's a vacuum since the passing of, um, Andy Rooney.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:53Pablo Torre?

  That someone should be on, even if it's YouTube, just a weekly segment where you can complain about things. I don't like most of the stuff passing for art and it's everywhere. Memphis, Tennessee. This was done to honor Martin Luther King. It's called, "I Been to the Mountain." Well, I'm an admirer of everything Martin Luther King stood for, but I don't think he would have stood for this.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  I have a lot of complaints about basketball. I'm pretty informed about things I don't like.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  By the way, didn't I text you about trying to?

• 32:27Speaker 02

  I'm busy. I'm a busy guy.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, booked and busy. So, hold on.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  No, you're trying to get me behind the camera. That's not gonna happen.

• 32:33Speaker 01

  I need a cinematographer.

• 32:35Speaker 02

  As Joe's agent, my client deserves to be in front of it.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  Of course, of course. Yeah, you wanna, what do you want? Can we name the segment now?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  A Minute with Andy Rooney? Just do that, just bring it back?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Is it you with your impersonation?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Sure, yeah.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, great.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  But I will be Filipino.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  The makeup department's gonna have to, yeah.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  It's fine. He gave me this blessing.

• 33:00Pablo Torre?

  Andy Rooney Estate will totally bless this if Joe wears brown face.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 33:05Pablo Torre?

  Old face. Old melted face. But Blake and Joe also share something else in common. You may recall from earlier in our aspiration series, our coverage of the FX mini-series Clipped, which is about the Clippers, including Blake Griffin, under former owner Donald Sterling. And, well, something you should maybe know about Joe Mandy is that he had a very special job on the Netflix show Running Point, which was seemingly inspired by the real-life story of Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, making Joe personally familiar with the problems of depicting the real-life NBA in a fictionalized scripted format.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  That's true, yeah.

• 33:48Pablo Torre?

  And so is Blake.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was technically a consulting producer on Running Point, and I feel like most of my job was like telling Mindy Kaling that certain storylines wouldn't work because of like salary cap implications.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  You were the salary cap expert?

• 34:07Speaker 02

  Well, it just felt like I needed to be like this. I feel like my job here is that like I don't want boyfriends watching this show to roll their eyes at certain scenarios.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Or girlfriends. They also know salary caps.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  You know, and that's exactly what I said.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Just making sure.

• 34:26Pablo Torre?

  Our data shows that many girlfriends across America are very familiar with Daktronics, the scoreboard manufacturer, and have made...

• 34:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:34Pablo Torre?

  Get ready, season four. I'm curious for your view on this as well, Blake, because when you watch fictionalized or adapted basketball on television, as you have also seen in your personal depiction of yourself, have you met the actor who played you ever, by the way?

• 34:52Speaker 01

  I did. I ran into him one time, yeah. It was before the show came out, so I also didn't really have a context of like how it looked. But I'm a supporter of actors, you know? I think they deserve, you know, yeah. Hey, congrats, by the way. I was pretty bummed with the show overall, to be honest.

• 35:16Pablo Torre?

  What is your Letterboxd review of Clipped?

• 35:19Speaker 01

  I made it through about 15 minutes of episode one, and I was like, I can't do this. But I also went in with a bad attitude. I went in with a real bad attitude.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Why?

• 35:29Speaker 01

  They didn't even ask me to play myself.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  That is crazy. You would have, yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 01

  I would have done it. Me with Laurence Fish and Ed O'Neill. Are you kidding me?

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:40Speaker 01

  How does that not sell?

• 35:42Pablo Torre?

  I love the idea of there being a very poorly reenacted basketball scene and then actual Blake Griffin.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Well, when I worked at Parks and Rec, we had a joke where Chris Bosh was on the Eagleton basketball team as like a ringer, and he was so nervous about saying his line correctly that he kept missing because he just wanted to nail the line after he made the shot.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  So you might have gotten...

• 36:08Speaker 01

  Also, Detlef was in...

• 36:10Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Roy Hibbert.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  My dog.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Also in Parks and Rec.

• 36:14Pablo Torre?

  Blake's very aware of who got to be on Parks and Rec.

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and we didn't get that call. Again, would have gladly done it. That's all right. I'm technically available.

• 36:25Speaker 02

  My favorite thing about Roy Hibbert is he follows my wife on Instagram. So like every once in a while, he'll be like, "Roy Hibbert just liked our photo of our dog."

• 36:32Speaker 01

  Sweet man.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a great guy.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Loves animals.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:36Pablo Torre?

  Not following you, though.

• 36:37Speaker 02

  No, no, no, just my wife and I. I'm not threatened.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  Did they meet when they were...

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, we've like, when he was on the Lakers, I would see him a lot.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  Okay, makes sense.

• 36:50Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I'm not saying that you should be concerned. I am just saying that Roy Hibbert has chosen not to follow you.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:59Pablo Torre?

  All right.

• 37:00Speaker 01

  You should ask him, DM him.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  I will. I'll look for my wife's account.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Hey, it's Joe.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Hey. We share this account.

• 37:09Pablo Torre?

  One of the things that Joe, by the way, has... Every time you come on, I'm like, no one foresaw the future of promoting anything better than Joe Mandy.

• 37:20Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  We're gonna need some YouTube bots soon.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Let me talk to my guy.

• 37:26Pablo Torre?

  Have you had a meeting, as I have had many meetings, where it's like, "We're gonna need a thumbnail"?

• 37:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, Noah, you meant this is the thing that I just didn't anticipate, yeah. It's like, "Let's get, let's photoshop Brad Pitt in there." Me. Just like trying to come up with catchy... I don't know. I try to be a purist in the way of like, "Well, we don't need all of this." But, you know, you gotta figure out how... I'm trying to make a show.

• 37:58Pablo Torre?

  I was once like you, Blake, where I'm like, "You know what? I want a Planet Earth nature scene." No famous people, no words. But I am seeing a... I'm seeing one right now. Every thumbnail is Gandhi.

• 38:16Speaker 02

  Gandhi here.

• 38:17Pablo Torre?

  Michael Jackson.

• 38:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Einstein.

• 38:20Pablo Torre?

  Einstein. I have one of those shirts. You bought that immediately?

• 38:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:27Pablo Torre?

  What else is in your eBay purchase history, Joe?

• 38:31Speaker 02

  There was a Desert Storm card collection that was made. Like collector's cards of big players. Of like generals and politicians. But like the one that's like worth money is that Osama bin Laden was... I got that recently.

• 38:49Pablo Torre?

  You have a bin Laden rookie?

• 38:51Speaker 02

  And it's like mint. It's like, like you were saying, PSA. It's like in a thing.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Obviously not signed.

• 38:57Speaker 02

  No, not yet.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  The show's like, "Oh, I found him years ago. I had to get this bad boy signed."

• 39:02Speaker 02

  I gave him a hard drive.

• 39:04Pablo Torre?

  I saw a Fanatic Fest.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 39:07Pablo Torre?

  Dude was a fanatic.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  And he says that guy's a fanatic.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Come meet Osama. Man, they really got everybody, didn't they?

• 39:19Pablo Torre?

  By the way, the greatest NBA tweet of all time is about Osama bin Laden.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  Terry Rozier?

• 39:23Pablo Torre?

  Who unfortunately has a Wikipedia page that has been rearranged since. Actually, Blake, can you do a line reading of this?

• 39:30Speaker 01

  Osama should have hooped instead of trying to kill people because he tall as hell. I thought there was an LOL in there.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, well, there's a follow-up.

• 39:41Pablo Torre?

  Oh, here we go. Blake, can you please read the follow-up from... Hold on. This is May 1, 2011. The original post was 11:10 PM.

• 39:52Speaker 02

  12 years later.

• 39:53Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God. 12 years later. May 1, 2023, 3:05 PM.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  I love the fact that he just like woke up one day and he's like, "I gotta amend that. Don't know where I was or what I was doing when I tweeted this, but happy anniversary. I was dead-ass curious."

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Crying emoji.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Crying laughing emoji. I love that it was such a cute, like 12 years later, he's like...

• 40:16Speaker 02

  He had to mark the anniversary.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  He has to celebrate.

• 40:21Pablo Torre?

  He never forgot.

• 40:22Speaker 01

  Never forget. Wow.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  "Don't know what, where I was. I was curious as hell."

• 40:28Pablo Torre?

  You know what? If we could now put a formal request for comment from Terry Rozier, we want to find out where you were and what you were doing on May 1, 2011.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, among other things.

• 40:39Pablo Torre?

  On many other things recently.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:42Pablo Torre?

  I should reveal that there is one more thing that we need, Joe...

• 40:47Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 40:47Pablo Torre?

  ...to present. Can we...

• 40:50Speaker 02

  Can we bring it out?

• 40:51Pablo Torre?

  Can we open the door one more time?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  A lot of surprises in this show.

• 40:55Speaker 02

  I know, right?

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Do I not look?

• 40:58Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, close your eyes, please. Close your eyes.

• 41:02Speaker 02

  All right, well, there's two.

• 41:03Pablo Torre?

  Oh, there's... Oh, my... Oh, wow. Oh, my God. I think, I think...

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Like an unboxing?

• 41:11Speaker 02

  All right, so this is...

• 41:13Speaker 01

  You tell me when to open.

• 41:14Speaker 02

  You can open them. So it's the LA Clippers hat. I don't know if you can get it. It says salary cap. Circumvention. And, um, and a little Easter egg is that it was a Mitchell and Ness hat, but I made it Balmer and Frank on the back. So.

• 41:32Pablo Torre?

  So what we're gonna do, Blake.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 41:35Pablo Torre?

  Is we're gonna auction this off for charity.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Love it.

• 41:38Pablo Torre?

  There's a fund called the Kira Fund. Our good friend David Sampson, his daughter died earlier this year from glioblastoma. On a very real note, we've been auctioning off things.

• 41:47Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 41:48Pablo Torre?

  Currently, you can buy, Blake Griffin personally can, you can buy the, uh, bird automaton that Kelly Clarkson didn't want.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 41:56Pablo Torre?

  We bought that. Available on the auction page. That is not a joke.

• 41:59Speaker 01

  That is incredible.

• 42:00Pablo Torre?

  For real. The Kira Fund goes towards that. Uh, we were hoping you might be able to autograph this.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  Can I take the sticker off and sign across there?

• 42:07Pablo Torre?

  Yes. So we are going to auction off a Blake Griffin signed.

• 42:11Speaker 01

  I would love to.

• 42:12Pablo Torre?

  Joe Mandy custom made.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  I mean, people who are into AT&T guarantee guys are going to freak out.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  The 14 people.

• 42:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Who know of the guarantee guys. There we go.

• 42:26Pablo Torre?

  And we would just like, Blake, if you could, if you could hold that just to show your signature, it'll be.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  I want to talk about the bird.

• 42:32Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  I would love to. Do you think if I bought it and gifted, here, let's do this first?

• 42:39Pablo Torre?

  Yes. The LA, by the way, just the, the, the mechanics of this. The LA inside of the blue C. Joe finding salary cap in red, using the LA.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:51Pablo Torre?

  And then across the bottom, the circumvention with the C.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  And I did my best to match the font in this one, you know?

• 42:58Pablo Torre?

  As always, it looks like you are an asylum patient. I mean, in terms of the handwriting.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  Truly, yeah.

• 43:04Pablo Torre?

  But it's beautiful.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  Part of it, yes.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  You, you, you, you laugh so you don't cry.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  That's my motto.

• 43:14Pablo Torre?

  So we have, we have that and the bird.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Uh, what, do you think, if I bought it, let's see.

• 43:21Pablo Torre?

  The automaton.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  For charity, yeah.

• 43:22Pablo Torre?

  Absolutely.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  And do you think if I gifted it to Kelly, would she find it funny, endearing, or would she be like, that was mean?

• 43:31Pablo Torre?

  I think that on the next season of The Step Back, we are going to find out.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  Let's, by the way, bookmark it. I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna buy it now.

• 43:41Pablo Torre?

  It's only $15 million.

• 43:45Speaker 01

  All right, maybe season 14 of Step Back. I gotta move some funds around. Ah, dang it.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  I mean, you guys are fellow talk show hosts.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, we, we, you know, we'll figure it out. We'll talk offline.

• 44:00Pablo Torre?

  I, I, I, our people will call your people who will call her people, because her people, I don't think are gonna respond to our people.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  And when we get the YouTube people involved, we, yeah, we figure it out.

• 44:10Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And Joe also kinda [BLEEP] on it being a YouTube show earlier.

• 44:14Speaker 02

  No, I didn't. No, I didn't.

• 44:16Pablo Torre?

  Funny to say that when you're on a YouTube show at the moment.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Oh, I sold the new show to Amazon, whatever.

• 44:20Pablo Torre?

  Whatever. Joe's just rolling in those network television residuals.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  The amount of embroidery thread I have, it's like, uh, Scrooge McDuck.

• 44:32Speaker 01

  Where do you go from here?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  Diving.

• 44:35Speaker 02

  I'm diving into thread.

• 44:36Speaker 01

  You get tangled up in real.

• 44:37Speaker 02

  It's really dangerous, yeah.

• 44:41Pablo Torre?

  But you have one more. I have another one.

• 44:43Speaker 02

  This, this, I did not know. I did not ask you to make.

• 44:46Pablo Torre?

  No, you didn't. But this one's a second one. It says blatant criminality.

• 44:52Speaker 02

  And then there's an aspiration logo on the back, so.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  I don't know about that.

• 44:57Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 44:58Pablo Torre?

  I'm gonna autograph that one. I'm gonna, I'm gonna autograph this one.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  This one is safer.

• 45:04Pablo Torre?

  Assuming, assuming that, uh, Steve Ballmer's attorneys do not find this to be legally actionable.

• 45:11Speaker 02

  Right.

• 45:11Pablo Torre?

  Because we're merely saying that this is alleged.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  You can, you can write alleged.

• 45:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:21Speaker 02

  Alleged, yeah.

• 45:22Speaker 01

  Oh, there we go. Lawyers will be very happy.

• 45:25Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, this is, this.

• 45:27Speaker 01

  And so how much time do you have on your hands?

• 45:30Speaker 02

  You know, I am, I was texting Pablo. I'm fully running a TV show right now. So I'm like, doing this while I write a TV show. So I'm, I'm.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Just like a nice little break.

• 45:42Speaker 02

  A little, I'm doing it at the same time, yeah.

• 45:45Pablo Torre?

  I just like that in between, uh, collecting Osama bin Laden trading cards.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Rookie cards, yeah.

• 45:51Pablo Torre?

  And, and, and stitching these caps for a very good cause. Uh, yeah, you are, you are also, uh.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  It's for a great cause. That's.

• 46:00Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it is.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 46:10Pablo Torre?

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• 46:55Pablo Torre?

  makes every part of the process easy. So visit Cozy today. That's C-O-Z-E-Y.com, and make yourself at home. This episode is brought to you by Onnit. You know those days where it's back-to-back meetings, a deadline you're already behind on, and somehow you still have to be present for family time after work? That's basically every Tuesday for me. And on days like that, I reach for AlphaBrain. AlphaBrain is a daily nootropic formula designed to support cognition, memory, attention, focus, and mental clarity. It's not about some artificial jolt. It's about helping you tune out distractions and actually get into the zone when you're deep

• 47:39Pablo Torre?

  in a task, whether that's plowing through emails, finishing a project, or just trying to stay sharp through a packed day. What I've noticed is that it supports flow state, that feeling when you're locked in, fully engaged, and things just click. Plus, it helps with quicker reaction times and everyday concentration when there's a lot competing for your attention. And on the more stressful days, it supports AlphaBrain wave activity to help take the edge off. If your days look anything like mine, juggling work, workouts, kids, whatever's next, AlphaBrain is built for exactly that kind of day. Shop now at

• 48:19Pablo Torre?

  Onnit.com. That's O-N-N-I-T.com.

• 48:27Speaker 06

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• 48:58Pablo Torre?

  So as always on this show, we go around the table and end an episode by saying what it is we found out today. Joe, we'll start with you.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  I didn't realize that was Michael Jackson in the Pioneer.

• 49:11Speaker 01

  Dang it. Why, why did he get, that was my big thing. I truly learned something.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Let me think if I can see something, uh, figure out something else. I found out that there is no limit to what you can turn an NBA hat into. The creativity is unmatched.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Then it turns out, running a TV show got a lot more time on my hands than I thought.

• 49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, dude, you should be crafting.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  I've been swamped with my show. This guy's running a real, my goodness.

• 49:41Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God. And I found out, I suppose, that Filipino Andy Rooney is gonna be a huge hit on YouTube and every Amazon platform he's allowed onto.

• 49:53Speaker 01

  Or it's gonna be the biggest downfall of all of us.

• 49:56Pablo Torre?

  Or we're all going to be.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  Free canceled.

• 49:58Speaker 01

  I think you're fine. I.

• 50:00Pablo Torre?

  Well.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  I don't know where I fall in that as a racially ambiguous person myself. I get the most wide-ranging people coming up to me being like, we have a cousin who looks just like you. It could be a Mexican family, a Latvian family, a, a mixed black and white family. I, I, you know, I sort of blend in. I'm a chameleon.

• 50:21Pablo Torre?

  No, what Blake is, what I really found out is that you really are a pioneer.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Gandhi, Einstein, Obama, JFK.

• 50:35Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna put in post.

• 50:36Speaker 01

  Michael Jackson. I think that was it, right? Muhammad Ali.

• 50:41Pablo Torre?

  Muhammad Ali.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Blake Griffin. Thank you so much for watching. This has been Pioneer Finds Out.

• 50:58Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.

• 51:25Speaker 06

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• 51:48Speaker 05

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• 52:19Speaker 02

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