Emergency Pod: Breaking Down the Clippers' Punishment!

Coming up on a Wednesday night edition of the Zacklow show, the walk till Lipton, Rosen

and Katz 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 Bomber, Microsoft Steve Bomber 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.

We've got 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talk about Pablo Torre being right all along to how the penalty superseded everything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 in Y and what's in that report.

All things Clippers, Raptors, Kawaii's going there apparently we talk about that just

whoo.

The moment that has been in the making for a year is here.

And then after that we talk about baseball, John Fennesy and I are talking about the

mess as we wind down a depressing season with Peter Lonso coming back to city field in

a couple weeks that'll be fun.

So that's all coming up on the Zach Lo Show.

Welcome to an emergency edition of the Zach Lo 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, Lypton, Rosen and Katz's extensive investigation.

I've read it highlighted the whole thing.

We have Kirk Goldberry our guy from the ringer.

How you doing buddy?

I'm doing well.

Great to see you again, Zach Lo.

We have a legal scholar.

He writes for Sportico.

He teaches at the University of New Hampshire among other places.

Michael McCann sports.

I'll 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 Balmer, their owner has been suspended from all the 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.

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 the 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.

But let's 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.

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 Shakey Ilge, 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 MBA team from

the League office in 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

just Steve Baumer in a way.

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 a place that you

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 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 Kawaii 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 Zach, 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 and there's no question

that although a $700,000 fine is obviously a lot of money, Kawaii 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 raptures.

He had the issue of 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 or 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 a timber wall

as 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 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 capricious way, courts usually don't touch them.

I'm glad you brought up Kawaii's statement, I'm going to 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 is caused the fans and my family.

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.

You know, 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 did 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.

Yes, he's getting off without 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.

Edline 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 and a fine or one first round pick and a fine.

Obviously, I was dead wrong and Pablo Torrey 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 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 want to go to you, Michael.

You're the legal professor.

You know, there's interviews, there's emails, there's texts.

This is something of a magnitude.

And there's stuff that free dates, the aspiration scandal, which is the entry point for Pablo

Spacke as in 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, 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 in Kirk thought it would be a modest penalty.

I was there with you.

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 Wachtel, 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.

It's really hard to refute.

Now, maybe some of the things in that aren't sure.

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, Blingo, 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 sort of headliner here in terms of

the front line person who's committing the against the NBA rules conduct.

We'll talk later about what Bomber knew, what he didn't know, what the report actually

says directly about Steve Bomber 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?

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 NBA 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

kind of 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, like 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 happen 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, 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.

What 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 Inuitoom scoreboard, right, Michael and Kirk.

And the clippers say, hey, you know what would be great is we think you're right.

We're good.

We'd like to hire you.

And now I'm going to read from the report.

The team wanted to agree on a spend back arrangement whereby Dactronics would provide business

back to the clippers.

Miss Zucker suggested to a Dactronics senior executive that this spend back could be accomplished

through an endorsement agreement between Dactronics and Leonard.

Dactronics believe that failing to enter into a commercial relationship with Leonard could

jeopardize its ability to win the bid for the Inuitoom.

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 Dactronics, a senior clippers executive

specified the precise financial terms that the clippers expected Dactronics 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 Dactronics that

because the team had decided to increase the amount it would spend on the scoreboard,

Dactronics should correspondingly increase the amount of money it would pay to Mr. Leonard.

That's just in fancy terms, right, Michael?

That's like, quote, quote, quote, 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 for this.

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 major league 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.

For what we read in that report, it doesn't seem like the clippers provided that or at least

is 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 their statement, right, is that like we're just simply introducing

Kawaii Leonard to sponsors and helping facilitate everybody does that all 30 teams do that.

The NBA knows that even name check Rick Buchan in the NBA general counsel saying Rick Buchan

knows this.

But the report, when you have an executive telling thatronics that because, hey, we're spending

more on the scoreboard, you got to spend more on Kawaii, 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 is through that.

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 Kawaii

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 Kawaii 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 ask for inappropriate things from the Los Angeles Lakers

in that same free agency period.

He wanted to stake in the Maple Leafs, man, like you were there 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 we'll turn to on aspiration specifically

and how that deal was arranged according to the report?

I scanned it before I went on this.

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 Sanberg, whoever it is, aspiration saying, hey, you asked for

an introduction to Gauai'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

Cauai 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

that there's a middleman 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.

And 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 again.

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 error would be amplified by the clippers.

And if it turns out there are factual errors and this, the clippers will certainly run

with 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, Shelburne 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, text, the business agent acting as an intermediator for the clippers quote,

if the forum agreement is in fixed, I will tear up the clippers contract, we will do nothing

with Kauai and 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 is an aside, here's another one.

If this isn't signed by tomorrow, there will be no choice but to do that.

The quid 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 knew it was super shady.

Another text from the same guy, I cannot begin to tell you all the red flags with this deal

just doing what I'm told.

I mean, that's not great.

Can I say one thing?

Yes.

And 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 report in context.

I must say 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.

He has to be thinking about, he can't now say I did it.

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.

I never formed that takes out or no.

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 did the beginning of the season asked the answer questions about it, et cetera.

Kirk, I'm sure you can attest to this too.

Like on, like on other bases, this is not news.

They've been adamant that they did nothing wrong.

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 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 is 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 happened.

And this is the why seems to be outlined here.

Yeah.

And you know, the statement they released today was very vitriolic.

It used the term podcaster, really sort of been a derogatory man or multiple times, sort

of demeaning 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, you know, 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

is saying.

Like this is Steve Balmer's legacy.

Like when we talk about Steve Balmer in 20 years, Zach Lowe 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?

Like 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 in the public.

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 tactic is.

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?

I think 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.

But 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 NVM, 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.

It's pretty blunt, too.

As you said, Zach, there was a lot of room for wiggle room there at a statement like

that.

And it doesn't seem like they had, I mean, this is the thing.

If they had a response to that, the report would have it because the report, 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.

Just 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 and 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 or opposite 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 a foul of the CBA.

And the NBA bylaws say, you must report those asks to the legal 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 Shulper and was deemed inaccurate at best,

meaning the best possible interpretation to 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, 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 the Balmer part of it.

And even beyond that, Kirk, we kind of joked at the beginning of this.

Of course, it's the Clippers.

If they're hammered, I remember saying something, if they're hammered, multiple first round

picks, finds, whatever, it might be time to just move on as a franchise, just move to

franchise somewhere else, whatever it is.

It's just absolutely cursed.

Nothing good has come of it.

The legacy of the Clippers is unless this is fought or overturned successfully, whatever

is Donald Sterling and this with some good basketball here and there in between.

And then a whole shit tunnel losing an Elgin Baler on the lottery day.

I mean, I don't know what else to say.

Yeah, I think Adam Silver's 11 year career as Commissioner Twilbyer 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 the 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's outlined.

Kawai Leonard not suspended.

Kawai 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 Lo and this story I know is 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, it was G Wiz.

Let's name who it was.

It was G Wiz, okay?

Yeah, 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.

I'm just saying, Jackson Hayes got suspended more than Kawai Leonard in that context.

So I wanted to ask you, Zach, were you just as surprised at Kawai 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

it was like completely ignorant of this.

But 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?

Like 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 tried to put myself in the shoes of a Raptor's fan.

I'm like, I sweet, the trade goes through.

Like 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, like, if I guess this is what you do as a fan, you just root for

the team.

And it's a little bit a little bit weird for me.

And Kawai'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 Raptor's fan, a little bit like, all right, I just

got to 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.

Dennis was a problem starting around 2017 when Zaz's opportunity is stuck his foot under

Kawai 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 the situation say the things

started to go sideways in San Antonio.

Dennis started to become a main character.

So you map out Kawai'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 Kawai Leonard who was my favorite basketball player on the

planet for a number of years, Zach, he, his inner circle to use his words in the statement

that 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 Kawai's career, but this is a blemish

to your point.

Okay.

I think it's a blemish, but this could have been so much worse for him.

Oh my gosh.

Right.

This report eviscerated Steve Balmer.

Yes.

Very personal ways goes after Clippers executives as being unprofessional, unethical, cheating

with Leonard, $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 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 in place with 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 it was

going on.

I would say something else that when we were thinking about this scandal, I focused on

Joe Samberg being somebody who was, you know, a criminal had, you know, 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, that they took their time and it paid

off.

Well, Pablo's tourist 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.

It'll 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 a certain way and back to the demos a 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

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 just like a club of very real people.

People mentioned this sort of doomsday scenario for the league and other entities were

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 on.

Because that requires getting past a motion to dismiss.

So if the clipper 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.

It's only going to happen if it gets past 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 sue.

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 made including.

And 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 for 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 Avita Zubats.

The old 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.

Whoo.

Anything else we haven't gotten to the interview.

You guys wanted to hit on this big picture, small picture.

It 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.

So the flip side of that, Zach, to your 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, the saga.

And 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 wrist, Zach, though, if they had just done, hey, two

second round picks and whatever, suddenly Carl Anthony Towns 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 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, 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

anticipate.

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, I mean, good luck explaining that one.

This is why you do those things in phone calls, not in messages.

That's right.

Like this is exactly why you don't leave an electronic trail.

It's kind of a lack of sophistication that that happened.

It's to not leave wiggle room, I think is also.

Well, some of it is kind of, they interview like, I can't remember how many people, it's

like 270 or something.

There's either 200 interviews or 270, but some of it is in emails and texts and some

of it appears to be from interviews where people cooperated anonymous executives, apparently

one of them, the clippers cooperated.

So how the 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 this is where we go from here.

And like, I never, this is, I mean, this is as big a sports scandal as wherever we're

going to cover, if this penalty holds or even if it's just chipped away a little bit.

And it is a death knell for the clippers for the foreseeable future.

Not that they had any great, I mean, I guess they have Keaton Woggler in that school, 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.

Kurt Gold's very, 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

on.

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 Fennesy, it's been a while.

It's been a month.

I went on vacation for a lot of that month.

The Met 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 raised 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 House on Days when the Met's 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.

Boy, it felt for a while like the Met's 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 100 and 132.

I mean, that's putrid.

So.

43 winning percentage for 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

pro rated 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 seven and four

to seven and 16.

I just think we can just gone five and seven instead of just falling flat on our faces

and staying down for three straight weeks.

We kind of had a would have a normal ish season.

Not only that, Peter Lazos 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.

He 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 all of them.

I think it's formulas.

This 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 Metz got from Jorge Polanco has

got to be like one of the biggest Delta's player left player signed to theoretically replace

that player.

And 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 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 two 65 gets on base just enough strikes

out 180 times and he's just having a pedalanzo season.

He's going to have an 8.

6.

8.

70 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 Indoor 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 wild card lead.

I get it.

It hasn't gone great.

I 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 a late probably improbable surge toward one the last wild

card 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 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 Pete

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 that 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 a moge.

He's made an 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 pass and I'm going to 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 a deep and meaningful Pete Crow Armstrong

conversation.

But this season at least, he looks like Mickey Mantle.

Oh my God.

And I don't think that into the meds.

It really could only happen.

I really don't think that's overstating things.

Like I think from a tools perspective, he's going to be a 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.

And 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 D H long term.

And then is that not one of the most exciting young lineups in baseball?

And you know, we got 68 games of Harvey Bayes and Trevor Williams and Harvey Bayes actually

played incredibly well after he was acquired by the Met.

In fact, maybe his best stretch of his career was in that 68 games.

But it also led to the Francisco Lindor 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 is, it is why we have low nets.

It is.

Is it that also now your isn't there also like a G a assistant 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 in the same season.

What would this is?

That mean really.

It's not really dark times you were not you were not yet in right when that was happening.

That was right.

But I was aware 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 a long zone because they have no other way to express their discontent.

Well now he's going to be in the stadium for the first time during a hit a 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.

Are you ready?

I'm ready.

Shine man, 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 and one inning from the outfield was just absolutely

delightful.

He is a goal 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 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 because Ben just had a quiet five

days and this sort of stuff changes very quickly and is very volatile.

Weather hold was the odds on favor for a long period of time because he 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 South Stewart who is the first basement for the Reds who

is who kind of looks like Peter Lonzo.

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 or a 1995 in terms of

what we were looking for in superstar sluggers.

So you've got those two guys and then you've got Benj and McLean and Benj is a five tool

right fielder who has an outside chance, maybe not even an outside chance to go 2020 and

is rookie year and has an elite elite elite arm.

And obviously that that Padres game that you're referencing when you had the two assists

in the first inning was my that might have been the highlight of the season 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.

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 pit batsman.

And yet when he struggles he still is able to kind of persist 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 in a really, really, really special place right now.

So the fact that both of those guys are in the conversation, Boad's great for us long

term.

Benj 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

meds jersey player.

It might be Carson Benj.

I think he's the best candidate at the moment.

Not we're not quite there.

Okay.

Other good things that have happened.

Francisco and doors 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 got none of the outs on a double play a couple games ago

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.

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 he 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.

And it was such a, I feel like it's like the third bad pick off the meds.

Ewing has had a couple of bad pick offs too.

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.

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 won so to still like 35 bags.

So I was going to 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 catches so electrifying.

Ewing isn't 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 brewers peritular 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 Shet.

I like that he's your irrational blind spot.

He is the big villain of the season for me and 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 dollar 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.

So PS, 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 he belongs.

Are you you made that note about how Polanco was was signed in an effort to fill the

the Alonzo 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 on guys who've

been in the rotation for the last few years, who we know were not built for it.

Peterson, Manaya, 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 over 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.

That would be nice.

I'm looking at Billy Amick stats in triple A's hitting home runs there.

This guy, Petri, I kind of like Cam Rojas is off the charts.

Mitch Void is hitting well.

And Jonah Tongue 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 in their other gone.

I'm like checking 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 just saying, you see Gary Gil Hill last night and he takes the hill.

There's dad jokes built in.

Okay.

Okay.

I am also feeling very good about that.

I can't help but just look at the met's marized Twitter highlights of guys who may never

make the major leagues.

It bombs like I think Billy Amick has 35 home runs in the in the minors this season.

Call him up now.

But he also is I think he struck out like 190 times.

So you know, the thing.

Okay.

Let's like let's do glass F empty glass F 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.

Everybody felt pretty good about that dismantling the Mac sure's or in Justin Burland or situation.

You know, moving on from David Robertson, 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 gets for guys who are not going to be a long term

part of the system.

And none of those guys really panned out as major leagueers.

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 waved 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 helps them.

He, 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.

The Mets are 26th in OPS, 27th in runs, 29th in doubles and 30th last in on base percentage.

They do not get on base.

Marcus Simian does not get on base.

He stinks.

Brett Bady 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 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 seal bases on him.

And 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 Vietto 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 and 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.

Manaya 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 in

some areas, but he's also giving 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.

And 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, I, and the green 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.

And we're, and we're, 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 Scotto.

The thing with Thornton is he's a soft tossing low profile lefty.

So that's okay.

If he's your number five starter.

And if we pick up a big time ace in the off season 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 it 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 Monaya, 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 AAA.

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,

throw in Bichette.

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 expectate, they 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 the steam 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 knockout 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 tarqs, scuvel and resigned

clay homes and traded for Yandee 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 disordered

game.

And they're just disappointing two year period for the franchise, given the expectations.

And Stern's 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 so to 105 games from Lendor and, you know, boat

was shit, 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 Sangha could

turn it around and we're really hoping Peterson and a contract here would make it happen.

And, you know, all of this kind of calculated risk that went into the philosophy of team

building 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 school bull $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 well-being

to this, this team.

So 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, school bull is pretty awesome.

Yes, he's the best.

You know, he's, he's about to turn 30.

You know, all those contracts are bad ideas.

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 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 and love lady.

Dickie, who's got Dickie love lady 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 asterixing their two 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 into Dodgers and the team just prints

money to such a degree that, including the little wrinkle that they Jeff Passen talked

about this week, who I have to unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, unfollow, 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 was, I'm sad.

I'm sad.

I'm not expecting the sport right now.

It makes me sad.

I like it when Diaz.

I do too, but I don't, I don't want to 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.

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.

I never, 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 he 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 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, so does her.

Linda or got hurt.

They did their injuries.

You know, 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 like five days and tell your right for 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.

I'm trying 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 what ends up being higher.

Fennessy's Telluride movie counter, Carson Benjus final home run.

I count for this season.

Don't fantasy.

Thank you, buddy.

We'll reconvene on Metz Corner soon.

I'll report back from the Pitalonzo game and it is a school night, but I don't care.

I can't finish everybody.

Thanks.

Thanks, Zach.

All right, that's it for tonight's edition of the Zach Locio.

Thanks to Michael McCann and Kirk Olsbury for jumping on on short notice.

Once this Clippers report came out, thanks to Sean Fennesy 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 Andor watching the Zach Locio 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 next

season.

Thanks, they all for tuning in and enjoy the Zach Locio.

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