Emergency Pod: Breaking Down the Clippers' Punishment!

Coming up on a Wednesday night edition of the Zac Lowe show, the walk-to-lipton-rozen-and-cats report is out, and boy is it damning, at least in the NBA's view and frankly in mind and some other people is upon reading it. But the bottom line is this, the NBA has thrown the book at the Clippers, five first-round picks gone, $30 million fine, Steve Balmer, Microsoft's Steve Balmer, suspended from all league activities for a year. Multiple Clippers executives, including Lawrence, Frank, the president of basketball operations, suspended for prolonged periods of time without pay. There's all sorts of stuff to get in on in terms of what their report found, why the findings merited such a gigantic punishment, really a death knell for the Clippers for the foreseeable future. That Michael McCann, a legal expert in Kirk Goldberry, of the ringer, of course, to talk about Pablo Torre being right all along to how the penalty superseded everything that we expected or anticipated it could be and why and what's in that report. All things Clippers, Raptors, Kawaii's going there apparently, we talk about that just woo. The moment that has been in the making for a year is here, and then after that we talk about baseball, Sean Fantasy and I are talking about the Mets as we wind down a depressing season with Pete Alonso coming back to city field in a couple weeks that'll be fun. So that's all coming up on the Zach Lowe show. Welcome to an emergency edition of the Zach Lowe show. The verdict is in the NBA has thrown the hammer down at the Los Angeles Clippers in the Kawaii Leonard cap circumvention scandal broken by Pablo Torre almost a year ago. The penalties are the biggest in the history of the NBA and among the biggest in the history of sports to help us sort out the whole thing, including the 36 page reports summarizing Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz's extensive investigation. I've read it highlighted the whole thing we have Kirk Goldsparing, our guy from the ringer, how you doing, buddy? I'm doing well, great to see you again, Zach Lowe. We have a legal scholar, he writes for Sportico, he teaches at the University of New Hampshire among other places, Michael McCann, Sports Law expert, how you doing? I'm doing great, Zach. Thanks for having me on. So I'm going to go through a couple of quick headlines, you guys chip in whenever you want. I think by the time people listen to this, they will know the extent of the penalties, but just in case the Clippers, having been found guilty by the NBA of cap circumvention, have been stripped of five first round picks, one in each of the drafts from 2029 to 2023, 2033. They have been fined $30 million. Steve Baumer, their owner, has been suspended from all legal activities for one year. Gillian Zucker, their president of business operations suspended without pay one year. Lawrence Frank, president of basketball operations suspended without pay six months. They're going to be monitored more extensively. Kawaii Leonard is required to pay a fine of $700,000 and Dennis Robinson, his uncle is banned from conducting business in the NBA. Five first round picks. So headline number one is, the Clippers are somewhere beyond fucked. I mean, this is like as harsh of a penalty as you could have imagined, as they could have imagined, and they have released two separate statements today indicating that they are going to fight this somehow, saying that the NBA changed its tune late in the game, saying that really all they are guilty of is introducing sponsors to Kawaii Leonard and that they were under the impression that that was fine. And even more sort of dire from the NBA perspective, a little statement within a statement saying, if you spend $50 million investigating every team in the league, I bet you find similar things. We'll see because I think the report is much more damning than that. So headline number one is, for an organization that has struggled for relevancy, basically its entire existence. This is pretty close to a death knell for a decade, a half decade. We don't even know. They're already rebuilding the Kawaii Leonard trade will presumably go through now so they'll have Brandon Ingram and Grady Dick and picks from the Raptors and the Raptors get loaded up with Kawaii I think they're going to be really good. But I mean, as recently as yesterday, a front-off is executive from another team, not the Clippers, not the Denver Nuggets who are about to come up, say, hey, the Clippers are kind of quietly positioned in themselves in case Yokech actually wants to leave Denver with lots of cap space and L.A. and all that. Forget that. This team is dead. Dead. No, the superstars ain't going here when they're out five first round picks and they can't put together real trades and all that. And obviously Kirk, you and I have been talking about this, this summer of 2019 for eight years now. It was a failure of some magnitude once the era kind of petered out with playoff losses in Paul George leaving and Oklahoma City winning a championship with Shagil just Alexander. And despite the fact that the Clippers made the only conference finals in the history of their franchise, not nothing. It now goes down the signing of Kawaii Leonard and the double sort of blow of the Paul George trade as one of the greatest catastrophic failures in the history of sports. I mean, what an opening. I think I speak for Michael when I applaud you on the opening. But yeah, my first headline, I have five takeaways from this thing. My first thing is what you laid out. This is all about the Clippers and the biggest punishment ever levied on an NBA team from the league office and the 80 year history of the league in terms of team building. Just a massive day in NBA history from that perspective. And it also brings us to the Adam Silver Point of it all where, look, I was pretty cynical all summer long, as were many people I talked to, oh, Adam's not going to do something that's severe to Steve Balmer in a way. Well, throw that out the window. I was shocked when the thing came in because I had sort of prepared Zacklow for a much more minor punishment on the team building side here. I did not expect five freaking first round picks to be stripped away. So all that smoke going back to August 17th on the ESPN article where it plays the U and I worked for a long time together. They had an article August 17th, hey, they haven't found anything. There's not going to be much here. Well, how is that age, Zacklow? Not great. And to your point, if there were ever going to be a deterrent to the other 29 teams, then not only do you not do the stuff that's outlined in this report that we're going to get to, you better have your situation so buttoned up that we can't even find like a derelection of duty and NCAA style, lack of institutional control, because we are going to come down hard when we find anything. Before I go on to my other takeaways, Michael McCann, I want to enlist you for this. The Clippers have said they are going to fight in any way possible against this decision to reverse it, to get picks back whatever it is. You do have been writing about the NBA Constitution, what it allows, what teams sign on to when they sign into the NBA, how the commissioners word is kind of binding down at the footnote of the NBA's press releases that the players union has also signed off on this because they are Kauai Leonard's advocate and they've basically accepted that punishment and moved on. What can the Clippers actually do? Can they sue the NBA? What are their actual remedies here? Yeah, so the Players Association piece, it's going to get overlooked and I'm glad you mentioned it, Zack. That's huge, because it is saying the other member of this collective bargaining agreement is okay with us, that they're not contesting it. There's no question that although a $700,000 fine is obviously a lot of money, Kauai Leonard comes out of this not looking nearly as bad as everyone else on the Clippers because he's not suspended, his contract is avoided, he's going to go on and play for the Raptors. He had an issue with a press release where he basically blamed others, but I think he's not a winner, but he's clearly not the loser that the Clippers are in this situation. In terms of the Clippers ability to contest this, good luck because this is a private association. This is fundamentally sports leagues, pro sports leagues, or like country clubs. They administer their own rules. They're given deference by courts and also by virtue of buying a franchise, owners relinquish contractually relinquish certain rights in terms of the ability to sue. So they can issue statements saying this was unfair. This was procedurally invalid. This will lead to negative ramifications, but actually this is the big problem, getting a forum, getting a court to actually hear any of this. And I think that's going to be the hard part for the Clippers that they can challenge it internally to the NBA. They can say it's not valid and maybe at some point the NBA could reconsider the NBA with the Timberwolves if you recall, they docked them five first round picks, but it ended up being three. So there was some reduction mitigation, if you will, that occurred there. Maybe we see something like that with the Clippers, I don't know. But going to the legal system, unfortunately for the Clippers is going to be extremely difficult to do because they are there in a club at the end of this is really just a club. and as long as clubs administer rules that not in an arbitrary or a capricious way, courts usually don't touch them. - I'm glad you brought up Kawaii's statement. I'm gonna read part of it now. Integrity and respect for the game are fundamental to who I am. I accept full responsibility for lapses and judgment by people within my inner circle and regret the distraction as situation has caused the fans and my family, blah, blah, blah, blah. I answered into my contract with the Clippers as well as the agreements in question in good faith, fully committed to fulfilling my obligations and with no knowledge of any intent on anyone's part to circumvent the salary cap. I find some of that at the very least a little bit hard to believe. Presumably, I understand extremely wealthy people have people managing their money and are monitoring their bank accounts, like I'm monitoring my bank account, but there's a lot of money flowing in and out of Kawaii's account. At some point you figure like, how do this get here? What am I supposed to do for this? And like, it is a little bit of your responsibility or as a human to know what your representatives are doing to some degree at least. So yes, he's getting off without, you know, a real punishment at all. The union surely fought for that. I don't think he comes off looking particularly good. I think he comes off looking pretty bad, but be that as it may. Adline number two from this is, I was dead wrong like you Kirk about what I thought was going to happen here. I predicted when this first broke and kind of mostly kind of stuck with it, that it would be a slap on the wrist that they wouldn't find a quote-unquote smoking gun. I remember I think with you Michael a year ago, I talked about maybe a few second-round picks at a fine or one first-round pick in a fine. Obviously I was dead wrong. And Pablo Torre is the big winner here. His reporting was asidious and thorough all along. And none of it was refuted by anybody at this point at all in even a minute detail. But I do think one of the reasons why the slap on the wrist prediction and the one first-round pick or multiple seconds or whatever was wrong is, there was all to talk about the smoking gun. And there wouldn't be a smoking gun. There wouldn't be a paper trail. And that's why it would all just be circumstantial evidence. We poured over the three of us, the clause in the CBA about circumstantial evidence and what that could allow the league on its own to do. Circumstantial evidence is not even mentioned in this 36-page report that we all read today because they didn't need it. If there's not a technical smoking gun in here, I don't really know what qualifies as smoking gun. There is so much damning direct evidence that they didn't need any circumstantial evidence. And this is what I wanna go to you Michael. You're the legal professor. There's interviews, there's emails, there's texts. This is something of a magnitude. And there's stuff that predates the aspiration scandal, which is the entry point for Pablo's podcast and all of this. This, I don't know if there's, there seems to be a lot of smoking guns or things similar to a smoking gun like there's stuff in here that if the recounting of the interviews and the conversations is correct and accurate, that is just damning. I mean, I don't know of any way around it, but maybe I'm being over dramatic, you tell me. No, you're not being overly dramatic because I've seen reports like this. And this is maybe the most damning report I've seen in pro sports of a team, particularly as you said, Zach, in terms of direct evidence. Again, this is represented as us, whether it all would prove true in court. We don't know, but we're going by what we're reading. I would also say that you mentioned you incurred, thought it would be a modest penalty. I was there with you. I, every, and also ESPN was there with you. Based on that article we read last month, it certainly be clearly that the leaks in that story were not from the NBA based on what we just read today in this report. So it wasn't as if the world was expecting by first round picks. I think the NBA community, the sports law community, if I may speak for it, nobody was expecting this. So this was stunning. And that report, it's by Wachtell, which is a top law firm that's going to get its ducks in order before it releases the report. Why did it take so long? Because I made sure there's a report like this. That's really hard to refute. Now, maybe some of the things in that aren't true. We don't have access to that information, but this was an extremely damning report. Obviously, the clippers say it's untrue and they're going to argue that. I don't know if there's a forum for them to argue that other than the public forum. But this was a pretty, I want to say, impressive, but it's impressive in the sense that it was so comprehensive. Let's just dive into it then. Because when we talk about stronger evidence than we were previously aware of, I think people who aren't going to sit down and read it should know a little bit about what's in there. So even before aspiration, the trees, all of that, in 2021, the clippers, that Kauai signs endorsement deals with three different companies. Dactronics, which Pablo has talked about, Boingo, the wireless company we all sign on to at airports, and an insurance company called Lockdown, not the Lockdown podcast network, just Lockdown, that I had never heard of before. This is in June, 2020. And one of the common themes that Gillian Zucker is the headliner here in terms of the front line person who's committing against the NBA rules conduct. We'll talk later about what Balmer knew, what he didn't know, what the report actually says directly about Steve Balmer who suspended a year. But one of the commonalities with these three companies and with aspiration is Gillian Zucker writes emails introducing Dennis Robertson and or some Kauai representative to representatives of those companies who are interested perhaps in paying Kauai for some sponsorship deal. And in all the emails, she words the emails as if all of those companies have previously asked her, hey, we would love to get in touch with Kauai Leonard. Can you do that? And the league, the investigators find no evidence of any prior contact to that nature of those companies reaching out saying we'd love to partner with Kauai. In other words, the league is concluded that Gillian Zucker was retroactively writing these emails after introductions had already been made, often by the clippers to make it look as if she were simply responding to those inquiries that had already come in from those companies. And the MBA says, or the investigation by Wattel says no documentary evidence supports those statements. They can't find any prior contact. And in fact, in fact, what they find in a lot of cases is that the clippers have already started the ball rolling. But that's step one. Like the absence of those proactive emails is like a big feather in the investigation here. - I was just going to add, when the report starts to really get going, Zach, there's this also, we have to go back to March and April of 2020. And I thought the Wattel report did an incredible job of contextualizing three or four of these deals unfolding at a time where America is in crisis. Nobody's doing any business. And the report sites, the three of these deals that the clippers had sort of set up for Kauai happened in the heart of the pandemic that goes so far as to say, nobody's doing any other endorsements in pro sports at that time. There's no, the deals move very quickly, unusually so and there was no expectation of any return of work in any of the paperwork they found. So I think that was another part of that saga, Zach, that I just thought was really interesting that they had pinpointed this in 2020 and much of Pablo's stuff was later than that. - Well, let me just be even simpler. What's outlined here is basically a quid pro quo. These companies pay Kauai Leonard for an endorsement deal for which he does nothing and none of them have any real history of having celebrity endorsers of any kind or athletes. And in return, right as those deals are signed, the clippers pay these three companies, consulting fees, consulting fees for consulting. In a couple of cases, they get the entire consulting fee upfront in multiple payments of $10 million each according to the report. Despite the fact that these companies have no history in the consulting business that the services contemplated by the consulting agreements are not worth what the clippers were paying for them. And one person from one of these companies says, at some point here it is, a credible witness with direct knowledge told investigators that the consulting agreement, one company signed with the clippers was in fact a ruse design and intended to be a vehicle for the team to provide the company with funds to be paid to Mr. Leonard. In other words, just a simple sort of exchange. You endorse Kauai Leonard, we do some business with you. And the most flaring example is Dactronics, which is the scoreboard thing. And I don't want to get too far into the nitty gritty, but Dactronics was bidding for work on the Inuittoom scoreboard, right Michael and Kirk? And the clippers say, hey, you know what would be great is we think you're good, we'd like to hire you. And now I'm gonna read from the report. The team wanted to agree on a spendback arrangement whereby Dactronics would provide business back to the clippers. Ms. Zucker suggested to a Dactronics senior executive that this spendback could be accomplished through an endorsement agreement between Dectronics. and Leonard. Dectronics believe that failing to enter into commercial relationship with Leonard could jeopardize its ability to win the bid for the win in Whitone. So they do, in fact, strike an endorsement deal with Leonard. And here's the damning part. In May 2020, in a call with a senior executive of Dectronics, a senior clippers executive specified the precise financial terms that the clippers expected Dectronics to provide to Mr. Leonard in the endorsement agreement $3 million per year for two years. And then a little bit later in February 2021, the clippers executive told Jack Tronix that because the team had decided to increase the amount it would spend on the scoreboard, Dectronics should correspondingly increase the amount of money it would pay to Mr. Leonard. That's just in fancy terms, right, Michael? That's like, would pro quo is what's being alleged there, right? Yeah. And I think the key part here is that the clippers doesn't do not appear to have had a rebuttal to this. I mean, if I'm the clippers, I'm going to argue this is not unusual. Other teams arrange or play a facilitating role in star players getting endorsement deals with sponsorships is not as if Leonard is the only player to have an endorsement deal with the team sponsor. It happens in soccer. It happens in majorly baseball. So the opportunity I think was there for the clippers to say, okay, what you're saying sounds suspicious, but in fact, this is how business is conducting. And for what we read in that report, it doesn't seem like the clippers provided that, or at least it's not from what I can tell stated in the report. That would be a really contextual evidence that this is not unusual. That this is standard practice. And we don't see that. We actually see it said that this is highly suspicious, highly unusual, a typical other NBA teams don't do this. And I think that's hard for the clippers. Well, they said that's that's their statement, right? Is that like, we're just simply introducing co-I Leonard to sponsors and helping facilitate everybody does that all 30 teams do that. The NBA knows that even name check Rick Buchanan, in the NBA general counsel saying, Rick Buchanan knows this. But the report, when you have an executive telling dectronics that because, hey, we're spending more on the scoreboard, you got to spend more on co-I, that's well beyond the conduct outline there is well beyond introduction and facilitation. And there doesn't appear to be another example. I think that's the most, that's the most damning thing for the clippers is that they can't say, oh yeah, the Celtics do that. The Rock if they had that, that would have been very powerful evidence and it doesn't appear based on what we know they do. Kirk, you wanted to say something? I just want to add, like, don't forget, like if a lot of us who had worked with co-I and Toronto or San Antonio had to pick which NBA player might get caught up in something like this at the end of last decade, a lot of us would have picked co-I Leonard because of Uncle Dennis, you know, coming out of the Toronto free agency period, there was a lot of smoke reported and otherwise about what Uncle Dennis was asking for from Toronto. There was reports that he would asking for inappropriate things from the Los Angeles Lakers in that same free agency period. He wanted to stake in the Maple Leafs, man, like they were asking for crazy stuff. Everybody knows that. It's been written about publicly for years. I just think it's vital context here, especially to Michael's point that, oh, you can't really make the everybody does this when we have like a seven year run of this intonuation that Uncle Dennis is the one doing this at the highest level in the NBA. Like, this is the guy who was at the center of it in 2019 and appears throughout the early 2020s act. Michael, did you have a chance to read the section that will turn to the on aspiration specifically and how that deal was arranged according to the report? I scanned it before I went on it. So, yeah. Did anything stick out to you from there? I mean, I can go through it myself. But if, like, I don't, again, I don't want to get too into the weeds, but there's an email. I think dated November 5th, 2021, which is one of these emails I'm talking about where Gillian Zucker writes to Joe Sandberg, whoever it is, aspiration, saying, hey, you asked for an introduction to Goliath's people. Here it is, but then the NBA goes back a week or 10 days before that and there's all this dialogue involving Gillian Zucker and a, quote, business agent retained under retainer from the Clippers, who serves as a middleman with aspiration about how much the company should be paying Kauai Leonard. And then that email is sent, but the wheels are already in motion by then. Am I reading that right? Yeah. And I think this is the part where the Clippers lose the argument that everybody's doing it, that there's a middleman, right? Negotiating endorsement income for a player. It sounds like in the college sports context sort of pay for play, right? And I, L being used as a way of funneling additional money, it reads like that. It also, we don't know of other examples of that, but this is the, I don't know of any other team that does anything. Maybe it happens, but I don't know if it happened, and it doesn't seem like the Clippers had another example that they could provide it. One of the reasons why I think this took so long, this investigation is that there was so much stuff to go through. And they know that any era would be amplified by the Clippers. And if it turns out there are factual errors in this, the Clippers will certainly run within it. But I don't see an avenue legally for them to go too far. I mean, just, here's what the report says, based on the foregoing evidence, investigators find these statements to be inaccurate at best with respect to Mr. Balmer. And they're talking about the statements Steve Balmer made to Ramona Shelborn on National TV. And clearly false with respect to Ms. Zucker, the Clippers suggested to aspiration that they enter into an endorsement agreement with Mr. Leonard, asked the business agent to help structure the agreement, conveyed proposed deal terms to that agent, i.e. how much money, provided input on the proposed deal, and on, and on like that. And then the quid pro quo comes with this what they call the forum agreement in the report, which is the Clippers pay aspiration, some amount of money to do sustainability stuff with the forum. And there's all kinds of text messages and emails in here making it clear that at least in the minds of aspiration, these two deals are connected to the point that when the forum deal is not being signed as quickly as an aspiration people would like, Mr. Sandberg from aspiration, texts, the business agent acting as an intermediator for the Clippers, quote, if the form agreement isn't fixed, I will tear up the Clippers contract, we will do nothing with Kauai, we will go to litigation. Should I call Dennis and Kauai and tell them that the deal is off because we got fucked, that's a direct quote. If this isn't signed, here's another one. If this isn't signed by tomorrow, there will be no choice but to do that. The Kauai deal is not happening without this forum deal. That's another text from Joe Sandberg. And then they have Clippers executives by name, Scott Sonnenberg, Clippers chief commercial officer wrote in a March 2022 text messages with Eric Chan, then the Clippers CFO, I never wanted this forum deal always new with super shady. Another text from the same guy, I cannot begin to tell you all the red flags with this with this deal, just doing what I'm told. I mean, that that's not great. Yeah, can I say one thing? Yes. And not I'm not taking the Clippers side by any means, but if you recall, the NFL had a very damning document of the Patriots during deflaking, a long report with exhibits, with statements, with emails, and the Patriots fought back, they released their own report, the Wells reporting context. I'm not saying it's going to happen here, but Steve Balmer has a lot of money. And it wouldn't surprise me if we see a rebuttal document released maybe this week, maybe not long after that, that tries to attack. And how will they attack? They will say, you have that email, but why didn't you include that other email? You have that text, but why don't you include the whole sequence of messages in that text? That's a common device used to at least create a cloud over the allegations, because right now, the Clippers, they're going to lose five first round picks. It's really tough to change that, but I think they have professional reputations, Steve Balmer's legacy. Right? Yeah. Like he has to be thinking about, he can't now say I did it. That's that's gone, because he's already said he didn't. So I think he's kind of boxed in where he has to fight back. I do think I would be very surprised. I mean, the Clippers have said we're fighting this. Whatever form that takes, I don't know. Look, I can tell you like no one from the Clippers has been willing to speak on the record about this since it happened other than it orchestrated press conferences where Lawrence Frank at the beginning of the season asked the answer questions about it, etc. Kirk, I'm sure you can attest to this too. Like on, like on other bases, this is not a news. They've been adamant that they did nothing wrong. I've had, I've had relationships sort of sour, if not splinter entirely, simply by asking questions. They were so offended that anyone would even impune them with questions. And I was like, okay, I mean, I guess that's how it's going to be. They've been adamant, adamant, adamant, adamant. And this report is, you know, maybe some of them didn't know all these texts and emails were in here, but like that adamant, if that's even a word, I would expect so. something from them, but I mean, I said last week, they are going to have, if they want to be really sort of exonerated or even nearly exonerated from this and now the opposite has happened, they have to find some explanation for why this money is flowing in this direction when no one else is funding this company, when the timing of like the Dennis Wong payment lines up, and you just can't say we found nothing, you have to actually show us why. And that's not happening, this is the why it seems to be outlined here. >> Yeah, and the statement they released today was very vitriolic. It used the term podcaster, really sort of in a derogatory manner, multiple times, sort of the meaning Pablo and his reporting, which I didn't think was the right, most professional tone, to strike if you are going to come out to Michael's point and try to credibly refute the material here. And I sent the walk tell report to some corporate lawyers, I know here in Austin, Texas, who are really sort of fancy lawyers and like this thing is legit, like this is a legit report. They spent a lot of money on it, in fact, we learned that the Clippers supported some of that investigation fund, but I think they're boxed in. And in that statement though, they also reference what Michael was saying, like this is Steve Balmer's legacy, like when we talk about Steve Balmer in 20 years, Zach Low, and we're these old white haired guys talking on podcasts. This is his legacy in the world of sports. This is just a huge moment for one of the richest men in America, and what happened today, in my estimation with this report, is the National Basketball Association pretty much called him a big old cheater to his face and said here are the receipts, and that's a humiliating thing for anybody, let alone somebody is proud and as powerful as Steve Balmer. Hey, Kirk, I mean, you pointed out going after Pablo, what's the point of that? Yeah. If you're the Clippers, that's not the target right now, going after Pablo Torrey, he made his case, the NBA said it's true. And in fact, the NBA said it's actually much worse than what Pablo Torrey said. So going after him, it's a waste of time for the Clippers. They should focus on, is there other evidence that's not in that report that somehow disproves or at least clouds what's alleged, because if they don't have that, I don't know what their tactics. I want to go back to the aspiration, paying Kauai, and the Clippers, then striking this forum deal, sustainability deal with aspiration, money flowing both directions. And then the impatience at aspiration when that sustainability deal was, I guess, slowed to be funded or whatever. This is a text from Eric Chan, who is the CFO of the Clippers at the time. And read into this what you want, right? This is one of the things that if the Clippers wanted to sort of say, well, this actually should be interpreted this way, they'll do that. This is the text, quote, Steve Balmer knows that when this deal blows up, Joe is calling Kauai and telling him his $12 million deal is no longer because of the Clippers management, right? So, but just double checking. And then the Wachtell report continues, Mr. Balmer told investigators that he was aware of Mr. Sandberg's threat not to move forward with the Leonard aspiration endorsement agreement if the Clippers did not timely execute the forum agreement. So unless I'm reading that wrong, Michael, that says in plain English, he told Wachtell, "Yeah, I knew he was threatening to blow up the Kauai deal if we didn't move forward with the forum deal with him." That, I don't really know what that is, but it's knowledge at the very least, right? It's showing they're acting together. I mean, if I'm the NBA, I'm going to say, this is all one big business arrangement with different pieces. One piece is between aspiration and the Clippers, the others with Leonard, and they're all moving together. They're all in unison. They're not separate entities. And that message seems to support that. I mean, this is the thing. If they had a response to that, the report would have it. Because the NBA knows Balmer is going to come after this report in every way possible. So they're going to try to preempt any potential arguments. And the fact that we don't see that there, to me, is a very notable omission. Let's take a very quick break and then wrap it up with some sort of conclusions about who knew what and when. Michael, to your point about Balmer's reputation and Kirk, your point about Balmer's reputation, I mean, the interesting thing is to actually sit through this report. We're going to have more time to do it in the coming days and say, what does it actually say that not Gillian Zucker, not Lawrence Frank, not Dennis Roberts and Joe Sanford? What exactly did Steve Balmer know? There are a couple of things that are indisputable according to the report. Number one, the report says, look, man, he lost control of his operation at the very least. And that's like, that's obvious, right? Number two, at the very least, he knew it says explicitly, he was aware that Dennis Robertson was asking for stuff that ran afoul of the CBA. And the NBA bylaws say, you must report those asks to the league office. And Steve Balmer did not do that. Other people didn't do it, but Steve Balmer also didn't do it. I mentioned that his TV interview with Ramon Shulburn was deemed inaccurate at best, meaning the best possible interpretation walk tell can make is he was dispensing inaccurate information perhaps unknowingly, but that's at the best means, maybe worse. And then there's this other thing of, you know, Steve knows this deal blows up. He was aware Mr. Sanford's threat to blow up the co-ideal of the forum deal blows up. That's like, that's the, that's the Balmer part of it. And even beyond that, Kirk, I mean, like, you know, we kind of joke that at the beginning of this, like, of course, it's the Clippers, like, if this is like, if they're hammered, I remember saying something, like if they're hammered, multiple first round picks, finds whatever, it might be time to just move on as a franchise, just move the franchise somewhere else, whatever it is, like, it's just absolutely cursed, nothing good has come of it. Like, I mean, that's the legacy of the Clippers is is unless this is fought or overturned successfully whatever is, is Donald Sterling and this with like some good basketball here and there in between. And then a whole shit tunnel losing an Elgin Baylor on the lottery day. So I mean, I don't know what else to say now that what, what, yeah, I think Adam Silver's, you know, 11 year career as commissioner 12 year is now bookended by two terrible scandals in the Clippers organization, very different scandals. But I think he's handled them both pretty well. But yeah, dude, this is a big, another black mark on LA Clippers. You brought up who knew what and why and one thing we haven't talked about and my biggest takeaway right when the punishment came out guys was, man, the NBA just levied the biggest penalty on a team, it's ever done five first round picks, $30 million, all this other stuff, Zach's outline, Kauai Leonard, not suspended, Kauai Leonard finds $700,000 according to the walk tell reports, some of these relationships gave him easily eight figures of added revenue for no show work as Pablo is outlined. You know, we live in a world, Zach Lowe in this story. I know it's close to your heart. Jackson Hayes got suspended one game for pushing a mascot in February of 2026. The player at the heart of this state, it was G Wiz, let's name who it was, it was G Wiz, okay? Yeah, I don't want to trigger G Wiz with that awful memory of Jackson, just sort of, it was more of a check than a shove. But I'm just saying, Jackson Hayes got suspended more than Kauai Leonard in that context. So I wanted to ask you, Zach, were you just as surprised at Kauai Leonard not getting any kind of suspension here? No, cynically no, because the focus is going to be the team and the representation. But like I said before, like I just find it hard to believe that he knew nothing and was like completely ignorant of this. But like, it does have me thinking like, first of all, we've already talked particularly Bill and I about, is this the weirdest career in the history of the NBA? Two-time finals MVP, legit MVP candidate, like I voted in for MVP in 2017, at the peak of his powers, one of the three to four best players in the league for a prolonged period of time, when he was healthy. But never healthy all the time, he's got 16,000 career points, that's sort of a middling amount for someone of his stature. And now there's this, and I try to put myself in the shoes of a Raptor's fan. I'm like, sweet, the trade goes through, awesome. I think, but now the sky's just like on our team and we're going to pay him. And yeah, Uncle Dennis is gone, and I guess this is what, I guess this is what you do as a fan, just for the team. But it would feel a little bit weird for me, and Kauai's entire career feels just completely bizarre from start to finish, including the mystery injury thing in San Antonio, where apparently he was upset at how they handled the injury and what the second and third opinions were and all that. it is it is strange and it would leave me if I were a Raptors fan a little bit like all right I just got I like put this in my side of my brain that I don't really activate for a while and just cheer for the mid-rangers. Well just one more point on that. There's people in San Antonio that I know very well that saw this coming. Dennis was a problem. I won't do the rhyming nickname. Starting around 2017, when Zaza Petulius stuck his foot under Kauai Leonard in the western finals in the game. I was attending and very disappointed to lose. That was the day. A lot of people who are very familiar with this situation say the things started to go sideways in San Antonio. Dennis started to become a main character. So you map out Kauai's career. I think the demise really starts in 2017. There's obviously a big pinnacle in 2019 where he wins the title in Toronto and then Dennis takes him into free agency and they're asking for all sorts of stuff. But I think like unfortunately for Kauai Leonard who was my favorite basketball player on the planet for a number of years. He his inner circle to use his words in the statement really let him down in the prime of his career and really led some damage added to some damage that might not otherwise have been there. And it's really a sad story. Honestly, when you talk about the the strangeness of Kauai's career, but but this is a blemish to your point. I think it's a blemish, but this could have been so much worse for him. I mean, this report eviscerated Steve Baume. In very personal ways goes after Clippers executives as being unprofessional unethical cheating with Leonard, it's $700,000 fine. As you said, Kirk, it's less than what some players are who make a lot less have had to pay out for for other things. I wonder how they arrived at that number, right? Like there's clearly been some some backdoor negotiating with the union. And in a way, this is a story about the union that this is this is the union fighting for a high profile member in a way that proved effective. I think Leonard walks away. He goes and plays for the Raptors. It's it's bad for him. I'm not saying he's cleared, but of the people mentioned this report, he seems like he received the least amount of scorn when it's hard to believe that he didn't know what was going on. I would say something else that when we were thinking about this scandal, I focused on Joe Sandberg being somebody who was a criminal had off to prison and and it not a reliable figure to base an investigation on that that the NBA had interviewed him, but they had all these other people that they talked to. I mean, that's the striking thing is that the scope of sources of information for the NBA was much more extensive than I think anyone was expecting. And that goes to the fact that it took so long, what they took their time and it paid off. Well, Pablo Torres thing from the beginning has been use your brain, everybody. Like money is going from here to from point A to point B and then back to point C. Use common sense. What what what else could there possibly be? And then gradually he found a whistleblower complaint. He found other things to back that up. But at base, he would say, what does logic tell you what was going on here? And the caution I think was, well, I'm not sure that like logic is going to be enough for the hammer hammer to be enough for something, but not the hammer hammer. And what what the NBA has in this report is more than logic about in in what tells you in the investigators view about how and why that money was going from point A to point B to point C. They have emails and texts and dated emails the certain way and back to the demos the certain way and all that that outline that that sort of buffer or bolster rather the logic that Pablo was positing the whole time. That's the way I basically read the report is his argument all along was, why is this money moving this way? Why else would it be? And the NBA said, well, here's some here's some stuff. Here's some emails sort of backing that up. And here we are. Like you said, Michael, maybe this this may not end. I mean, I guess the clippers will do. I just don't know like there's no arbitration procedure for them, right? No, this is an internal matter for the league. They can they can always sue. So you began the show by saying could they sue? Sure. And they have plenty of money. You could always file a lawsuit. But it's suing and then having it dismissed because they've agreed to arbitrate would would allow people to ridicule them further to say, look, they did it. I mean, the Patriots were totally opposed to deflakeate, but they never sued because they knew it would go nowhere. They knew they play in a club. This is this is just like a club of very real people. People mentioned this sort of doomsday scenario for the league and other entities. Do you see in corporate scandals? A lot of like, well, if you sue, well, then that's going to just compel all this documentary evidence that nobody wants out. That's not the case here you're saying. There's no way they can compel documents from like this team and that team and on and you know, because that requires getting past a motion to dismiss. So if the clippers sue, the NBA will say this should be dismissed on the basis of they have contractually agreed to the NBA having final authority on this. There is no forum for them to bring their claim. The only forum would be within the confines of the NBA. And it's really hard to get around that argument. So what you're referring to is pre-child discovery. That's only going to happen if it gets passed a motion to dismiss. And I see that being really hard. Now look, Balmer, if you hire five huge law firms and you pay them a gazillion dollars, they'll come up with something. But it's very telling that the Patriots didn't sue and that other teams don't say. And there's by the way, I just, not for nothing, there's other, there's other, the like, the clippers have extra first round picks in some of these years from trades that they've made including. I guess this trade that's going to go through with the Raptors. I just got a text from someone saying, hey, the Celtics are a big winner today. And I'm looking back at the picks that the Celtics own. And they have this sort of best of pick from the clippers or the Sixers in 2028. And we're going to have to get a full accounting of like which picks the clippers are being stripped of. I reported earlier today that one of them is the Pacers pick in 2029. And I'm protected Pacers picked that they got in the Evita Zubat deal. That pick just vanishes in the thin air now. The Pacers don't get it back. But there are other teams that have shorted the clippers basically and could benefit from that. And I'm going to have to go through all of that. Anything else we haven't gotten to the either of you guys wanted to hit on this big picture, small picture, if Michael legal ease that we should be paying attention to anything we missed. You know, one thing was the fear that if the clippers are punished, it will chill the market for players to get endorsement deals with team sponsors. And that is something that I could see that the clippers could argue that this is actually detrimental to players. But I say that knowing that the union has agreed to this. So that undermines that argument that this is somehow going to make it harder for players to get as lucrative as endorsement deals. The fact that the union signed on to me is a huge part of this. Yeah. And the flip side of that exact year earlier point of everybody does this. And sort of the flip side of what Michael just said is, man, I talked to people all year about this that saga. And you know, you ask executives around the league, does everybody do this? Most of them say, hell no, we're too scared to do it. If they had done the slap on the risk act, though, if they had just done, hey, two second round picks and whatever, suddenly Carl Anthony Townes could take a lot less in New York and get extended and get a big sponsor with this fear in Las Vegas or something like that. I think this now will scare a lot of teams in the future from trying to get cute and paying max players more, free agents more with these circumvention techniques. I think Adam Silverer gets a win this week with this because I think it will legitimately scare other teams from trying to cheat like this. Well, again, like I never, the team sponsor player sponsor thing again, we can find a number of NBA players who have individual deals with teams with with companies who sponsor, signage at the arena, whatever. I just never thought we would get a report that said, we actually, we can say that Wachtel can just declare this in a report that a clipper's executive specified the precise financial terms that the clippers expected the electronics to provide to Mr. Leonard $3 million for two years. That's the report saying, no, no, we have evidence. This law firm, reputable, the argues in front of the Supreme Court law firm, has evidence that a clipper's executive told a company how much to pay Kawaii Leonard and that same clipper's executive told the electronics, hey, we're spending more on the scoreboard than anticipated. You better up your deal with Kawaii. I just never thought, however it got onto the record, whether through interviews or in some cases, emails that we would see a trail like that. I mean, that is like, okay, good luck explaining that one. This is why you do those things in phone calls, not in messages. That's right. Right? Like, this is exactly why you don't leave an electronic trail. It's kind of a lack of sophistication that that happened. I mean, to not leave wiggle room, I think is also. Some of it is kind of, I mean, they interview like, I can't remember how many people it's like 270 something, there's either 200 interviews or 270 but some of it is in emails and texts and some that is appears to be from interviews or people cooperated anonymous executives apparently one of them the clippers cooperated so the how that each bit of information gets to the law firm is you'd have to do so work to trace it all but they have they have like hey this is our evidence this stands up and and this is where we go from here and like I never this is I mean this is as big a sports scandal as we're ever going to cover if this penalty holds or even if it's just chipped away out a little bit and it is a death knell for the clippers for the foreseeable future it not that they had any great I mean I guess they have Keaton Wagler that's cool but I don't know we'll learn more about this as as more stuff happens as reaction comes out as the clippers do what they do Kirk Goldsbury and Michael McCann you guys have been helping me out from the very beginning of this you are very busy Michael particularly you've got other like you've got NIL stuff going there's like a lot of stuff happening in the in the sports law slash business world right now so I appreciate you taking the time and Kirk I always appreciate you taking the time and I have a feeling we have not heard the last of this but thank you guys thank you thank you all right it's time to talk about everyone's favorite national league baseball team the new york metropolitan's it's met's corner Sean fantasy it's been a while it's been a month I went on vacation for a lot of that month the match suddenly got hot they are now 19 and 15 in their last 34 games as we recorded this on Wednesday after a very irritating loss to Freddie Peralta and the Tampa Bay Rays a loss I caused by talking shit on my podcast Monday about how much I was enjoying Freddie Peralta's continued failure and then of course I you just threw that one right in my face now that brings us to since the the Halcyon days when the meds were 45 and 24 to start last season we are now 132 in our last 232 games we have the fifth worst record in major league baseball this year ahead of only the A's the Angels the Giants and the Rockies and we got Peter Lonzo coming to town in about 10 days and so I guess I would start with 19 and 15 but it felt for a while like the meds were legitimately kind of hot that's not that great are we did we all get a little too happy about what was going on in this little mini stretch within a longer season and a half stretch of misery I never tricked myself into thinking that we were actually turning things around so I think it's okay there was a moment that was roughly 10 to 12 days long after the trade deadline where the team was legitimately very fun to watch and I will cherish that 10 to 12 day stretch when I look back on this season as I look back on many failed seasons and say well there were glimmers of excitement there was there's and there is a lot of positivity that we can talk about with the team some things are actually going well and there is a case for optimism for next year to range though that might sound and who knows if we'll even have baseball but I feel even at 19 and 15 being decent to close the season does have some value now should anyone feel good at all about the way that things transpired over the last what did you say 232 games 232 games all 132 mean that's putrid so 43 winning percentage 4 4 30 it's not good yeah I mean just think of the how many how much did each win cost during that period with prorated salary cap that's got to be some of the lowest value you're ever going to get out of a salary in the history of major league baseball right yeah you know who is among the lowest bang for the buck players in my brief reconnection to major league baseball Jorge Polanco and you know what I've been thinking Sean when I think of 62 and 77 in 19 and 15 I think of two things I think of the 12 game losing streak from early in the season we win from 7 and 4 to 7 and 16 and just say we can just gone 5 and 7 instead of just falling flat on our faces and staying down for three straight weeks we've kind of had a what have a normal issue season not only that Peter Lasos return on September 14 12 days from now I bought two really good seats for that game I think I'm bringing my daughter we're having a kind of a family conference where the phrase it's a school night has been uttered a couple of times and my my daughter doesn't really care he is going to get such a heroes welcome because all that dude does is hit you just hits and hits and hits and hits and David Sterns and his equations or whatever Pete Alonzo once said when you're doing your equations I'll be up for the hall of fame I think it's formulas is what he was saying formulas the formula the formula I decided that he wasn't good enough to continue playing first base the Delta between Pete Alonzo's current season and what the met Scott from Jorge Polanco has got to be like one of the biggest Delta's player left player signed to theoretically replace that player in the history of the baseball if we had just had Pete Alonzo playing first base that's like four wins five wins right there based on how bad Polanco was now Jared Young has been it's been pretty solid and I I think one of the one of the nice stories of the team but he's going to get a heroes welcome I'm very interested to see what the atmosphere is going to be like it's obviously going to be great for him but it's going to be kind of a fun night at city field I'm going we're going yeah it's that unique scenario where someone left because they were offered a better deal but we don't hold it against them emotionally because we have a big relationship to Pete and the strategy that the front office which does not have a lot of supporters right now saw it was at least in the short term clearly not the correct one now I wouldn't say I'm surprised by the season that Pete is having he's 31 he's a power hitter who was ostensibly at the end of his like in the kind of the final two to three years of his prime he's been such a consistent player over the years he's had maybe one and a half dramatically down seasons but otherwise he's kind of metronomic 30 and 100 hits somewhere between two 45 and 265 gets on base just enough strikes out 180 times and he's just having a pedalanzo season he's going to have an 860 870 OPS he is one of the three or four best power hitters of his generation and that's it now maybe we can feel a little bit better about it when he's 33 or 34 and is dramatically declining and striking out 200 times and not walking at the rate that he's walking at this year but that's two to three years from now that's not right now right now we want to win and we want to win with Francisco and Endor and we want to win with Juan Soto and we want to win with the thrilling psychopaths and Nolan McLean and Christian Scott and he would have fit really nicely in this team so it's really painful to know now just very quickly though even if we had his four or five wins we'd still be seven games back to the wildcard lead I get it it hasn't gone great I would just like to have those four or five wins and just maybe a couple other things break right and we're around 500 and like these games feel like they matter instead of like that you know I kind of don't mind losing to the race because it screws the Yankees and I kind of don't mind losing to the Orioles because I want Pete to make the playoffs and the Orioles are making this like late probably improbable surge toward one the last wildcard spot but here we are it's going to be fun I can't wait to go to the game it's going to be a lot of a lot of the long ovation for Pete my love you know he'll always be in my heart you know what really also what else is really hurting me on a daily basis I'm going to have to I put Jeff Passon on my tweet alerts for the trade deadline because we made a lot of trades we did I might have to take him off because like three of his last four tweets are about P Crow Armstrong doing historically amazing things and I'm like I don't need to shit in my life I'm aware that it's going on then he should be a met and one of my best friends is a Cubs fan and every time I share one of these tweets with our baseball text thread which is a few of us he tweets back in emoji he's made it a more a self-emoji like a key it looks like him curly hair and glasses just shrugging or smiling and I'm like I hate this Jeff Passon I'm gonna have to unfollow you stop tweeting about it Zach it's such a tough one and we I don't know if we've really had it deep in meaningful Pete Crow Armstrong conversation but this season at least he looks like Mickey Mantle and I don't think that it really could only happen I really don't think that's overstating things like I think from a tools perspective he's gonna win the MVP I know I know it's very very difficult I mean this is five years ago now that that trade transpired and we kind of brushed it aside because he seemed to have like kind of an up and down rise through the minor leagues when he was traded you have to remember he had played I think maybe 15 professional games total and was injured so even though he was a first round pick in a big time prospect it was very very early on in his professional career but over the course of the last the first half of last season and the entirety of this season he just looks like a generational superstar he looks like a hall of fame style player and that's insanely difficult to accept because how perfectly would he fit in a universe with Carson Benj and AJ Ewing and we can move on so to either first base or DH long term and then is that not one of the most exciting young lineups in baseball and you know we got 68 games of Havi Bayez and Trevor Williams and Havi Bayez actually played incredibly well after he was acquired by the Metz in fact maybe his best stretch of his. career was in that 68 games, but it also led to the Francis Cole indoor thumbs down moment and a team that failed to make the playoffs. And the general manager who made that trade was let go because of a DUI incident. And it's, it is, it is why we have low bets. It is, isn't that also now you're, isn't there also like a system GM or GM sexting incident or like inappropriate text messages incident? That was, yeah, that was Jared Porter. He preceded Zach Scott. This was all on the same season. I mean, really, it was worth dark times. You were not, you were not yet in, right? When that was happening, that was where the scandals break through the media barrier. Okay, enough, enough belly aching. Sorry. I am, I am very excited for this peak game because we have good seats. And also, if you remember, the low moment of the season was probably the game, I think it's all the same game where they make six infield errors, they trade David Peterson during the game or before the game. And the crowd is chanting Pete Longzo because they have no other way to express their discontent. Well, now he's going to be in this stadium for this part for the first time during a hit of home run. He's the all time meds home run leader. We decided who cares about that. Okay, let's be positive. I'm going to list some good things legit good things. And if you care about the meds going forward, these things have happened during this last couple of months. So you ready? I'm ready. chime in whenever you want number one, no, let me claim legit number one or worse, number two starter. I think the last six starts have proved that he has genuine top 10 ace potential. Number two, Carson Benj, completely legit optimism within the organization that the power uptick is coming for him. Just looks like he's going to be an awesome two way player for a very long time. The game where he had two assists in one inning from the outfield was just absolutely delightful. He is a gold glove caliber fielder. And I want you to weigh in on this. You think he should be right there for rookie of the year. This guy weather hold on St. Louis is is the odds on favor now. But McLean is also technically a rookie. I forgot that baseball does this thing where in the NBA, if you play a second one season, you are no longer a rookie. McLean is still a rookie. Yes, McLean didn't qualify. He only started eight games last season. To me, actually, I think McLean has now surpassed Benj, just had a quiet five days. And this sort of stuff changes very quickly and is very volatile. Weather hold was the odds on favorite for a long period of time because they got off to a hot start and is like a historically skilled second basement. So his defensive metrics are through the roof. And so his value is really high because they're not a lot of good second basement and baseball. So you might look at his like counting stats and his power and his batting average and it might not seem very impressive relative to some of the other competitors. The other guy who's in the race is Sal Stewart, who's the first basement for the Reds, who is who kind of looks like Peter Lonso. He's already hit 30 home runs. He's going to have 100 RBI. He's like the more of a traditional rookie of the year winners circa 1995 in terms of what we were looking for in superstar sluggers. So you've got those two guys and then you got Benj and McLean. And Benj is a five tool right fielder who is has an outside chance, maybe not even an outside chance to go 2020 in his rookie year and has an elite elite elite arm. And obviously that Padre's game that you're referencing when he had the two assists in the first inning was my that might have been the highlight of the season for me for the season. I think McLean what McLean is doing now though is even more impressive because he's had a really bizarre defensive lineup behind him all season. He's had a very, very unsupportive offense behind him. And he's also struggled with command throughout this season. And he has this weird thing where you can kind of tell in the first two innings whether he's got it. I think he's near the top of the league and hits hit batsman. And yet when he struggles, he still is able to kind of persists through some of those things to give you six or seven innings and seven or eight strikeouts. And you know, I think he's giving up like one run in the last 30 innings or something. I mean, he's he's in a really, really, really special place right now. So the fact that both of those guys are in the conversation. Boads great for us long term bench, though, just has a charisma that you love as a fan. He might be a he might be leading the pack right now for Zach finally buys his new match jersey player. My it might be Carson Bench. I think he's the best candidate at the moment. Not we're not quite there. Okay, other good things that have happened. Francisco Lindor is all the way back offensively defensively where he just continues to be a complete mysterious disaster. He's made two horrible errors, one of which was somehow not scored an error on a sure thing double play where they've gotten none of the outs on a double play a couple games go and then botched the ground or last night. Don't really know what's going on there. This is by far his worst defensive season ever looking at any metric errors, advanced metrics, all of it. But offensively, he's all the way back from the hand injury from the other injuries that he missed time with. And that that's fantastic. And by the way, my highlight of the season was his diving catch to save the brewers game the other day where, of course, again, and something that could only happen to the meds. The broadcast went soprano style out black right at the moment where Lindor was about to make the catch and left everyone wondering, oh, this is probably the meds. I'm sure it hit off his glove and everybody scored for the brewers. No, he actually caught the ball. He's all the way back. Wait, can I just say one thing about that? Yes. The only thing that was disappointing about that was in the immediate following inning, he got on base to start off the inning in a tie game and then got picked off the first base. I feel like it's like the third bad pick off the medicine, you wing has had a couple of bad pick offs to it's like, what are we like this is the fundamental stuff of just like, you don't move the runner over. You don't score the runner from third with less than two outs is the stuff that's been and I don't know, like, I don't know why that seems to be a team wide affliction. And I don't know like how you coach those things as a baseball manager and hitting coach, like we just don't do any of those things. You got to remember, we lost our extremely successful first base coach Anton Richardson in the off season due to some sort of like inability to give him the benefits that he desired in a contract negotiation. And then he went to go to the braves who are now like 35 games over 500. And we didn't have a lot of pick off issues last season and one so to still like 35 bags. So yeah, I was going to sort of have a steal this entire season after suddenly going 40 30 last year. Not very many. Yeah. I mean, in general, they've taken a big step back. Ewing has a ton of speed and so he's aggressive and so he makes mistakes sometimes. But yeah, the pick off was maddening because that catcher still electrifying. Ewing is in a major slump, but I'm not worried about him. He's legit. And a lot of his outs in this major slump have been very loud. Out it's hard hit outs, including a line drive that I thought was going to kill Dusty May, the Brewer's particular day that just hit him right in the back. Boba Shet looks pretty boba shetty. I know you just can't forgive him. You're all the way out on boba shet. He's been pretty boba shetty since like June 1st. It sounds like he's going to opt into his deal for next year. I'm all right with that. I like that you have. You just don't like he's going to have to hit 450 for like three months for you to free to give boba shed. I like that he's your irrational blind spot. He he is the the big villain of the season for me. And it's I'm sure he's a good guy. And I'm you know, he's really he's played every game. He's kept his head up through this extremely disappointing season. So I don't want to attack him. But when they went through that 12 game losing streak, Juan Soto was injured and it was on him. You know, like it was really up to him to step up and fill a gap. And he didn't play well at all during that period. And he didn't play well at all in April, May and June. And he ticked up in or excuse me, maybe he had a hot June and a quiet July. And then he had a hot August. But the one thing that I'm looking at with him that does worry me given that he has a $42 million salary is that his extra base hits this year are way down, way down, career low sort of percentages in terms of his slugging. And so even though he has had yet a really good August, he still has a 700 OPS, which is just not good. And for someone of his caliber of player at his salary. And if he is actually entering a phase where he's just more of a singles hitter and a very skilled singles hitter, but a singles hitter. Then that's problematic for next season. Because there's already an absence of power in terms of Peter Lanzo. You made that note about how Polanco was signed in an effort to fill the Lanzo power vacuum. But so was Bo, you know, like that was part of the idea. And Bo was never going to be a 35 home run hitter. But he could be a 25 or at least the 20 home run hitter. And he could hit 45 doubles in the season. And he's not having that kind of year. And I do think that between the super shaky starting pitching of relying guys who've been in the rotation for the last few years, who we know are not built for it. Peterson, Maniah, Sanga, those guys who just, they weren't going to be long term solutions. And guys like Bo just not playing at the back of their baseball card. That's what put the team in this, this situation this year. Yes, Bo has 23 doubles, 44 last year. Doubles are sexy, man. I love doubles. They are. Rowan loves the triple ever fetishizes the triple. They're so rare. I love a good double. Sanga, maybe he can be a productive reliever and salvageable. He's been fine. And we'll get to the starting pitching. I'm going to lead the starting pitch into the side for a second. And the minor league system seems to be restocked after the trade deadline. Although clay homes has been unbelievable for the clubs. I'd like to resign clay homes so that we can get Jefferson, Rojas and clay homes and just steal everything. But I'm looking at Billy Amick stats in triple A's hitting home runs there. This guy, Petry, I kind of like Cam Rojas is off the charts. Which void is hitting well. And Jonah Tong has allowed two or fewer earned runs in seven of his last eight starts and maybe called up by the time this podcast comes out on Thursday. Those are all very nice things and there are. I'm like checking to Stafura. I'm like looking up his stats, Gary Gil Hill. I haven't rooted for someone based on how fun their name is to say in quite a long time. I would love for Gary Gil Hill to be a part of my life. So I can go around and just say, "Hey, you see Gary Gil Hill last night?" And he takes the hill. There's dad jokes built in. It's all great. Okay. I am also feeling very good about that. I can't help but just look at the Mets Marized Twitter highlights of guys who may never make the major leagues. It bombs. I think Billy Amick has 35 home runs in the minors this season. Call him up now. I think he struck out like 190 times. So you know, the thing, okay, let's do glass half empty glass half full with this stuff because it's kind of interesting. If you go back to the most recent sell off, I guess was 23, they acquired a ton of prospects. Somebody felt pretty good about that dismantling the Mac Sherser and Justin Burlander situation. You know, moving on from David Robertson and a number of other pieces. And Billy Eppler made a lot of those deals and picked up Luis and Helikunia, Ryan Clifford, you know, a whole host of guys who at the time were like top 10 prospects in the systems of the teams that we were trading with. And we felt like these are pretty good guests for guys who were not going to be a long-term part of the system. And none of those guys really panned out as major leakers. Some of them were used in deals to make other acquisitions. I think it's possible that Jefferson Rojas is the long-term second basement or third basement of the New York Mets. He seems like a legitimately like a tier prospect. He's a top 100 prospect. Every other guy that we've acquired as cool as they seem right now is probably just a lottery ticket. And I wouldn't be surprised if most of them are used to acquire a couple of big ticket names in this off season. That's just where my head's at with most of those guys. So I'm not going to, I'm trying not to get too attached to them. Well, Akunia was used to acquire Luis Robert Jr. who as soon as he got hot and started actually playing the Mets just waived him to go away and so someone else had to pay him. That was fun. I enjoyed the Luis Robert Jr. era. And now he's Mallory Rubens, a center field or whatever he's going to be. I hope he hopes that would be, you know, like he'd eat. One thing he can do is hit 425 foot home runs. That's something that he clearly can still, everything else is kind of upper debate. Okay. Let's go on to things that are bad. And that's our 26th in OPS, 27th in runs, 29th in doubles and 30th last in on base percentage. They do not get on base. Marcus Simion does not get on base. He stinks. Brett Beatty does not get on base. He stinks. Francisco Alvarez, I'm nearing the end of my rope, man. I'm nearing the end of my rope. Are you just not good? Is this just what it is? He has 110 strikeouts in 316 at bats. He's grounded into 16 double plays. He cannot resist a high fastball to save his life and swings and misses it all of them. And I'm getting antsy. You know, I've been an Alvigye, catchers with pop are just like, you know, one of my white whales. I can't, I can't give up. I'm about ready for Luis Torrance to just be our catcher because that guy is rock solid behind the plate. He doesn't drop balls. No one tries to steal bases on him. I mean, he's actually not a bad hitter. Those guys don't get on base very much in addition to the other guys who don't get on base. Mark Vientos does not get on base. He's about, are you ready for this like, oh, he's hitting home runs in the minors. He came up. He hit a home run immediately. He, I'm just prepping you right now. He's going to hit eight home runs in the next 25 games and trick us again into thinking that that guy from 2024 is just around the corner. He doesn't get on base. I sound like freaking Billy Bean and Moneyball, give me people who get on base. We are 30th and on base percentage and we're just terrible at it. Maniah has gone back into a slump after looking pretty promising. He's been victimized by some bloopers and ground balls that just get through the hole and some errors, but he's also given up a lot of home runs. And I just still don't know, and this is where I need you to weigh in. I don't know how much I can really trust Christian Scott and Zach with no age Thornton as like rock solid three, four level starting pitchers in next year's rotation. Christian Scott has been actually pretty good statistically. Thornton, there's this interesting debate about the luck adjusted pitching, right? Like his, his fielding independent pitching ERA or whatever the number is, is higher than his actual ERA to a degree that is unusual. What are your thigh and degree was asked about this before one of his recent starts? I don't really know what to make of it. I don't know if I'm getting a look like Pete, this happened with Peterson, where it's like, "Oh, he induces a million double plays, that's great." And as soon as that stops happening, he's traded to another team and he's not good. Okay. I will address that very quickly on Terence versus Alvarez. Luis Terence currently has is 0.006 behind Francisco Alvarez in OPS right now, 0.006. That's astonishing. Given that Luis Terence has no reputation as an offensive player, and Francisco Alvarez was once the number one prospect in all of baseball because of his ability to hit. And weirdly, Terence has like crazy opposite field power. Like all of his home runs or through the opposite field, there's something's happening with him. I hope it's an evolution. It might just be a blip. It's hard to say. As far as Thornton and Scott go, the thing with Thornton is he's a soft tossing low profile lefty. So that's okay if he's your number five starter. If we pick up a big time ace in the offseason and we bump him down in the rotation, that's not a problem. And I think he's a great change of pace in the rotation. Christian Scott on the other hand, he looks like the kind of guy who should be at top of the rotation, dominator, but maybe doesn't have the same, I don't know, mental fortitude that it seems like Thornton has where when he gets into trouble, he kind of let's go with the rope in the fifth inning and kind of get let games get out of his hands. So I guess we'll have to wait and see. I'd love it if they were penciled in at four and five and Nolan claim was at two and they picked up a one and a three, but picking up on a one and a three is not easy. You know, it's going to require a lot of cleverness in terms of acquisitions. Sean Menaya. I like the guy. He's 36 years old. He's entering the final season of a deal that he probably wasn't worthy of in the first place. He seems like a great teammate, but I never believed his like little mini streak of quality pitching that he showed us in August. It's going to be a really interesting end of season for Tongue because there's no reason not to call him up. Now that he's really studied in triple A, boy, would it be nice if he showed us five starts of like, all right, this guy could be in the rotation next year. Because here's zooming out like given the payroll and given the guys at the top of the org chart, Lindor, Soto throwing the shit if you want, McLean now, the pedigree those guys have or are establishing, it would be nice to build a team that had, I'm not talking like expected expected win totals, but that had legit like if things go right, 90% of things go pretty right. This team could win 90 games like that shouldn't be so high a bar, but this team won 83 games last year and they fell on their face even trying to get to 83. They're going to win in the 70s this year. And it just feels like, yes, some of these nice things are all happening at the same time. Presently, if all those nice things continue happening, I could see the team winning like 84 games next year, but like the team should be better than that. And I hope whatever is happening right now does not make ownership, uh, Stern's complacent about like if there's a season next season knock on wood, there's still a lot of work to do to get this team to a point where it's like, oh, yeah, I could see this team being like a pretty solid playoff team. Would you would your mind be changed if they went out and sign tarks, scoobal and resigned clay homes and traded for Yondi Diaz and added another bat? And would you immediately start feeling like this is a 95 win team again? Yeah, because those are like four awesome players. Yeah, I know, but they're coming, they're coming off of like a historically disappointing two year period for the franchise, given the expectations. And Sterns is basically going into his lame duck period. You know, like if he doesn't make it happen, it's over. And we're starting a new administration. So like stuff's going to have to change like they can't sell the fans on, well, you had a lot of bad luck and they did have a lot of bad luck. We, well, we had only 105 games from Soto and 105 games from Lendor and, you know, boob sh*t took a while to get adjusted and we took a chance on Lou Bob and we took a chance on Palanco and they didn't work out and, oh, you know, we were really hoping to think it could turn it around. And we're really hoping Peterson in a contract year would make it happen. And, you know, all of this kind of calculated risk that went into the philosophy of teambuilding for the squad this year, almost across the board failed. And so there has to be, I think, almost like a, like a public pivot from the way that the team was built the previous two seasons to show the fan base. Now, I'm not necessarily sure I'm in favor of giving Tark's Google $800 million. I don't, I don't really think that's like a good idea, but I do know that they have to do something to get us to be like, okay, fine, and I'll, I'll bring up my season tickets and I will spend countless nights in the dead of summer devoting my emotional wellbeing to this, this team. So I, I expect dramatic changes, but I also don't know like being too dramatic often doesn't work in the Met's favor. So it feels like a paradox as well. I mean, schoolable is pretty awesome. Yes, he's the best. You know, and he's about to turn 30, you know, all those contracts are bad ideas. But at some point, we just have to embrace the bad idea, long contracts to get good. And by, oh, by the way, after you build the entire bullpen, even though they've somehow continued to be really good after they traded the entire bullpen, my guy, Nate Lavender, I always said Sean, I always said, I believe in Nate Lavender, is there a way to get Lavender and love lady in the same way? bullpen, that seems like a tag team that should happen in a goofy bullpen. But like Nate Lavender, is he giving up a run yet? I don't think he's giving up one run. That honestly sounds like a 1970s porno. Lavender, a lovely lady. Dickey, who's got Dickey lovely now? Somebody has him. He picked, I saw him pitch recently. Yeah. Was he, was he on the Yankees or the Nationals or who picked him up? I don't remember. Like one thing we can all agree on is let's just not have a Yankees Dodgers World Series. Let's have somebody else get involved. Can I get any thoughts from you on the Dodgers situation? Like, well, where do you want to go with it? Obviously, I'm very familiar because of the Lakers sale. But like, are you, are you, are you, are you asterixing there to World Series titles? Are you hoping that there are, is it like, are they going to, are they going to sell and or not spend to keep guys like school bull? Like, where, where are you at? I guess my question for you as somebody who's pretty sophisticated in understanding how some of these things work is, do you feel that this will auger a dramatic change for the future of that franchise, which then I think kind of really shifts the access of power across all of baseball? It can't help. Then again, they're insistent that they're not so in the Dodgers and the team just prints money to such a degree that, and including the little wrinkle that they Jeff Passen talked about this week, who I have to unfollow on, on, on like a super follow on Twitter about how their, their, their TV money is not included in, in revenue sharing the way it normally would be. So it feels like they have a pretty big cushion. They're obviously going to have another long playoff run this year. I don't, they feel kind of insulated, but the, the tentacles of this are, are still spreading. It's certainly like, we can hope, like I can, we can all hope and dream that maybe someone shakes loose from their, from the team. By the way, also kind of nice that we didn't get Kyle Tucker in the end, although I say that he's probably going to hit like a critical Grand Slam in game two of the World Series this year. I mean, to say nothing of your boy Edwin DS. I mean, I mean, I, I, I, I, I, it makes me sad. I like it when Diaz. I do too, but I don't, I don't get it. That went as bad as it could possibly go. I guess we got to give Stern's credit for that. Like he, he steered away from that to some degree. Like they made a pretty commensurate offer that Dodgers beat it by some amount. I don't remember what it was. So they didn't totally steer away from it. So maybe he gets no credit. I don't know, but yeah, that's, but relievers are so weird. Maybe he'll have a great, you know, fall and great next season. But if you want to be kind to Stern's about this season, in addition to some moves that didn't, you know, he didn't make, he built a hell of a bullpen. Yeah. And he had been historically renowned for being very good at that. And this was a year where he did spend a lot of money. You know, he spent these are like 10 million plus players in Minter and Weaver and Williams and, you know, high profile relievers, but they pitched well. And I, I'm hopeful that he can do the same thing next year. Just I never, I, I got sentimental about Alonzo really fast, which is why I'm going out of my way to go to this game. Because his home run is really what brought me back into being a fan, the excitement of that game in Milwaukee, that dramatic home run. And I know, I knew who he was. I knew about the 53 home run season, whatever it was. Like I knew about him, but the coincidental timing of me getting laid off from the worldwide leader, the meds being in the playoff run, that home run happening in that circumstance, that got me back in. And so I got sentimental about him fast, but like, it just isn't surprising that a 31 year old absolute masher at first base is going to be an absolute masher for like three more seasons. And yeah, his fielding is not going to be great. He's a first baseman. The whole point of him is to hit a bunch of home runs and a bunch of doubles. And it's not surprising that he's going to do that. Like, he's, he's having a better year this year than you were about the same year this year as he did last year, which was better than the year before that, which got everyone concerned. I don't know. That one, I just can't, I can't get by what is the plan at first base. If not that, what was the plan? We talked about it last year. Like the guy was so important to our offense all last year. If we don't bring him back, what's the plan? Well, this is the plan. You're 62 and 77. Yes, Soto's hurt. Lindor got hurt. They did their injuries. They missed a lot of time together and separately. Okay, great. You know what? That makes you a bad team. And like for the payroll for this market, for this fan base, we deserve a roster going into next year that again, it's not like, Hey, if this cute little frisky bunch of guys all clicks, they could be 85 and what at 77 or whatever the math is like we deserve an actual real team. And there's a lot of work to be done. Preach brother. I'm, you know, I couldn't have said it better myself. All right, maybe I'll get my bench, my bench road grade. At least we have him. He's a beautiful boy. We got him. He really is good. Yeah, he might be the year McLean or the two leading candidates. All right, Sean Fennessy, the big pin. What do we got coming up on the big picture? I'm flying to Telluride, Colorado in 12 hours. And I'll be at the film festival there. And I'll be reporting back from it on Tuesday. So I'm looking forward to that. What's today? When so at like five days and Telluride four days. Yeah, how many how many movies in five days? The plan is 20. Oh my god. Wow. If I can get to 18, I feel good about it because I'm trying to I try to make the most of the film festivals. Otherwise, why go? I'm not going to party. I'm going to see the movies. We'll do we'll do who what what ends up being higher? Fennessy's Telluride movie counter Carson Benges final home run count for this season. Don't fantasy. Thank you, buddy. Well, we'll reconvene on meds corner soon. I'll report back from the Peter Lonzo game and it is a school night, but I don't care. I can't finish everybody. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks, Zach. All right. That's it for tonight's edition of the Zach Lo Show. Thanks to Michael McCann and Kirk Olsberg for jumping on on short notice. Once this Clippers report came out. Thanks to Sean Fennessy for jumping on earlier today to talk about the New York metropolitan. Thanks to Mike Billy and Jonathan as always on production and thanks to you all for listening to and/or watching the Zach Lo Show. At this point, we'll probably be back next early next week. Monday or Tuesday with a new episode of what's going on in the NBA. Looking ahead to the next season. Thanks, see y'all for tuning in and enjoy the Zach Lo Show. 21 or over in president select states for Kansas in affiliation with Kansas, Darcasino or 18 and over in president DC Kentucky or Wyoming gambling problem. Call one 800 gambler or 1-800-my reset. Call 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat in Connecticut or is it mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24/7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8 hope-ny or text hope-ny in New York for Louisiana. Call 1-877-770-7867.